In this paper, we present mathematical models for the ring covering problems arising in the design of multi-ring WDM networks. Also, we present efficient algorithms to solve the suggested models. By the computational experiment, our model can solve the medium-sized networks efficiently and shows better performance than the existing heuristic method. Although we propose an efficient method for the column generation procedure, branching rule that does not destroy the column generation structure is unsolved. Further research is required to develop an effective branching rule.