US Patent 9166692 Network fabric reconfiguration

The present disclosure describes systems and methods for reconfiguring the links made by a plurality of optical circuit switches between the nodes of the first layer and the nodes of the second layer that reduces the throughput loss when the network transitions form a first logical topology to a second logical topology. More particularly, the first logical topology is realized by a specific physical topology, while the second logical topology may be realized by one or more physical topologies. The disclosure describes a method for selecting a second physical topology from the one or more physical topologies that will realize the second logical topology while reducing the number of links within each of the optical circuit switches that must be reconfigured (i.e, disconnected from their present ports and reconnected to new ports within the optical circuit switch) to transition from the first to second logical topology.