Abstract
We investigate the problem of topology design of an optical network by bottleneck‐cut identification. For an optical network, the topology‐design problem can be viewed as a combined two‐layer design problem: physical‐topology design and virtual‐topology design. In this study, we present the definition of bottleneck cut of an optical network. A heuristic algorithm is proposed to find the bottleneck cut, and then we show how to apply this algorithm to an optical network for topology design and upgrade.