A method or corresponding apparatus according to an example embodiment of the present invention maintains a traffic engineering database of values representing characteristics of links in the network through storage of {HEAD ~ integer values} representing {TAIL ~ advertised optical signal capabilities} of links between the multiple optical nodes 
A method or corresponding apparatus according to an example embodiment of the present invention maintains a traffic engineering database of values representing characteristics of links in the network through storage of { HEAD ~ integer values } representing { TAIL ~ advertised optical signal capabilities } of links between the multiple optical nodes
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