Architectural arrangement for bandwidth management in large central offices

The virtually unused switching fabric of an OC-192 SONET transport node is used to greater effect when used as a switching node. Several of the nodes are used in the central office (CO) of a communication network. Each node terminates an optical network link and each node hosts a number of transport cards that also terminate different optical network links. The nodes provide space-switching between the cards. Additionally an intra-CO optical link is provided that interconnects the nodes to allow traffic flow between any of the optical network links in the CO that are terminated by transport cards or the nodes.