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In one embodiment, information is exchanged between independent control planes of different layers in a multilayer network, such as, but not limited to, between a packet switching client-layer network and an optical server-layer network. This exchanged information includes signaling regarding a server-layer communications service, having server-layer characteristics, within the server-layer network for use in communicatively coupling at least two devices of the client-layer network. In one embodiment, the client-layer network specifies at least one of these server-layer characteristics that the server-layer communications service provided by the server-layer network must have. In one embodiment, the server-layer network signal to the client-layer network at least one of these server-layer characteristics of the existing server-layer communications service. In one embodiment, this signaling between the client-layer …