ROUTE FINDING IN COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS

摘要

A method of determining a restoration route (or an additional route) in a fully or partially meshed communications network of nodes, comprising sending, from a failure node a common help message on each span corresponding to a failed route, the common help message comprising a respective route ID field (and a respective associated route capacity field) for each failed route, and a route ID count field. A node which upon receipt of such a common help message initially determines itself to be the master end node for a plurality existing routes will generates and forward flood a common forward route-finder message for those failed routes. A slave node will respond to receipt of a forward route-finder signature to generate a respective return signature for the route for which it is slave, and send it back along the restoration route traversed by the received route-finder signature. Any tandem node of the restoration route which has less capacity than that requested by the route being restored will make connections for the available amount, forward the return signature with the capacity field overwritten with the available amount, and send a backtrack signature to the slave for that route to dismantle previously made connections in preceding tandem nodes and to inform the slave node of the amount of the capacity deficit. The slave node responds by switching to act as master and sending a reverse route-finder signature for the deficit amount, and the master responds to receipt of the return signature (whose capacity amount is less than the node knows is requested for the route) switches to act as slave for that route and awaits a reverse route-finder signature. The use of the common signature for a plurality of route IDs reduces the overall time to achieve restoration.