In this paper, we study the problem of placing limited number of wavelength converting nodes in a multi-fiber network with static traffic demands and propose a tabu search based heuristic algorithm. The objective of the algorithm is to achieve the performance of full wavelength conversion in terms of minimizing the total number of fibers used in the network by placing minimum number of wavelength converting nodes. We also present a greedy algorithm and compare its performance with the tabu search algorithm. Finally, we present numerical results that demonstrate the high correlation between placing a wavelength converting node and the amount of transit traffic passing through that node. © Springer-Verlag 2004.