Emerging lambda-Grid systems employ wavelength-routed network with optical switches to enable dynamic on-demand lightpaths with multi-gigabit rate bandwidth to interconnect shared computing clusters of user domains. User-centric lambda-Grid systems enable user domains to act as distributed connectivity providers of shared wavelength resources; and as distributed network control service providers of brokering shared wavelength resources and of provisioning scheduled lightpaths. To support user-centric lambda-Grid systems, the proposed Dynamic User-centric Switched Optical Network (DUSON) architecture employs an Intelligent Control Service Proxy (ICSP) at each user domain to support wavelength connectivity brokerage and lightpath provisioning/restoration middleware for user applications to control on-demand lightpaths. Furthermore, ICSP employs the proposed Robust Fast Optical Reservation Protocol (RFORP) during lightpath provisioning/restoration to minimize wavelength reservation blocking and delay via localized rerouting and parallel concurrent wavelength reservation processing respectively.