METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SELECTING BETWEEN MULTIPLE EQUAL COST PATHS

摘要

Each equal cost path is assigned a path ID created by concatenating an ordered set of link IDs which form the path through the network. The link IDs are created from the node IDs on either set of the link. The link IDs are sorted from lowest to highest to facilitate ranking of the paths. The low and high ranked paths are selected from this ranked list as the first set of diverse paths through the network. Each of the link IDs on each of the paths is then renamed, for example by inverting either all of the high node IDs or low node IDs. After re-naming the links, new path IDs are created by concatenating an ordered set of renamed link IDs. The paths are then re-ranked and the low and high re-ranked paths are selected from this re-ranked list as the second set of diverse paths.

主权项

1. A method of selecting between a plurality of equal-cost paths in a communication network, the method comprising:
determining a set of equal-cost paths between a pair of nodes of the communication network, each equal-cost path comprising at least one link; assigning a respective unique identifier to each link of the at least one link on each of the equal-cost paths; forming a path identifier for each of the equal-cost paths to form a plurality of path identifiers, each path identifier corresponding to one equal-cost path in the set of equal-cost paths and being formed by ordering link identifiers of the at least one link on a respective equal-cost path using a first ordering criterion and concatenating the link identifiers in that order; and selecting at least one equal-cost path of the set of equal-cost paths by comparing the plurality of path identifiers.