The distributed wavelength reservation protocols are used for wavelength reservation and configuration during the connection setup process. Such protocols proposed so far in the literature all aim to achieve better blocking performance. But no protocol based on local information has been developed to get a shorter setup time which is very important in the most dynamic networks in the future. A novel distributed wavelength reservation protocol for wavelength-routed networks,named destination reservation protocol(DRP),is proposed. The connection setup delay is shortened and the messages needed to be processed are reduced. Simulation results reveal that DRP outperforms the other protocols in the literature.