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 when creating the path ID 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 through the network. Selective naming of node IDs and use of different inversion functions can be exploited to further optimize distribution of traffic on the network.