1. A system for computing optical network characteristics, the system comprising: a plurality of network elements arranged into two or more domains, each of the two or more domains comprising one or more network elements sharing a common operational characteristic protocol; the plurality of network elements in optical communication along an optical path, the optical path including a first network element associated with a first domain, the first network element at an origin of the optical path and a final network element associated with a second domain, the final network element at a terminus of the optical path; two or more optical computation engines, each of the two or more optical computation engine associated with one of the two or more domains; the two or more optical computation engines configured to perform calculations related to the optical performance of the network elements associated with the same domain as the optical computation engine; and a centralized path computation engine configured to interface with the two or more optical computation engines to calculate one or more characteristics of the optical path.