Optical switching systems and methods

An optical switching system and method that provide fault tolerant optical switching without duplicating the entire system. Two optical switches are provided, each of which receives a portion of a transmitted optical signal. Should one switch fail, the other switch is still able to perform the required optical routing of the optical signal to the desired receiving node. The two switches can be the same type of optical switch that have identical switching functionality, or each switch could have a distinct switching functionality. In one example, one switch could be a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) switch that has fast switching speed but uses more power, and the other switch could be a micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) switch that has slower switching speed but uses less power, thereby combining the benefits of fast switching and low power switching into a single architecture.