The example embodiment maintains a traffic engineering database of values representing characteristics of links in the network, through storage of integer values representing advertised optical signal capabilities of {HEAD ~ links} between {TAIL ~ the multiple optical nodes} 
between
The example embodiment maintains a traffic engineering database of values representing characteristics of links in the network , through storage of integer values representing advertised optical signal capabilities of { HEAD ~ links } between { TAIL ~ the multiple optical nodes }
OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH OTH HEAD HEAD HEAD HEAD HEAD REL TAIL TAIL TAIL TAIL TAIL TAIL TAIL TAIL