The inventive method, implemented in an optical flexible wavelength division multiplexing FWDM network, includes finding a connection route in an optical FWDM network on which a channel with sufficient spectrum is available at lowest wavelength among all available channels, finding K channels at first available K lower wavelengths out of available channels for minimizing total required spectrum; and selecting a channel which is routed through minimum number of optical fiber paths out of the K available channels at one of the lower wavelengths.