Hi, I don't know if this is the right forum but if someone could shed some light on the following questions, I would really appreciate that. I have read the standards but did not get a clear understanding on the following: 1) Given a SONET ring with UPSR, is it required that all working paths be in one direction (clockwise or anticlockwise) and all protected paths be in the opposite direction? Can I provision some working paths to be clockwise and some to be counterclockwise? I couldn't find anything in the standards that says that this is not allowed. If this can be done, what are the merits/demerits of this approach? 2) In UPSR, when provisioning a working path, my understanding is that it is not "required" to provision the protected path as well. i.e. One can provision only unprotected paths in a UPSR configuration. Is this correct? 3) Given a deployment of 4 node UPSR configuration A, B, C, D. Say I provision a working path in clockwise direction from node A to D. Say I am using timeslot 'x' for this path. Is timeslot 'x' also reserved in the clockwise direction from D to A? What is the rational behind reserving this timeslot 'x' from D to A? Thanks, Rishi