This invention extends routing mechanisms that use link metrics for route selection so that: A link metric cross correlation vector is determined for all links, where each element in the vector corresponds to some other link, and reflects the change in the link metric value if a data flow would already use this other link. The invention further describes a specific embodiment where all cross-correlating links are adjacent to each other, i.e., they terminate or originate in a common node. A mechanism is described to create an extended routing graph. This extended graph permits the use of standard polynomial time algorithms that simultaneously construct the optimal route and find the optimal route metric (such as shortest-path algorithms) also for the adjacent link cross-correlating case.

Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and computer readable media for modifying IP backbone link weights such that multicast traffic and unicast traffic will not travel on a same path between nodes. The method comprises assigning link weights to nodes within an IP backbone such that multicast forwarding paths and unicast forwarding paths are failure disjoint, and delivering undelivered multicast packets using IP unicast encapsulation to the loopback address of next hop router on a multicast tree upon link/interface failure.

A method is provided for traffic aggregation in a hitless protected packet switched network having source and destination nodes. The method includes enabling a working path and a protecting path between the source and destination nodes. The working path is non-overlapping with respect to the protecting path. The method includes generating, using a processor, internal marker packets at working and protecting input ports of the source nodes. Each market packet represents a respective marker time period. The method includes transmitting the marker packets to working and protecting output ports of the source nodes, by the working and protecting input ports of the source nodes. The method includes selectively aggregating, at each of the working and protecting output ports of the source nodes, hitless traffic sent from different working and protecting inputs ports of the source nodes to provide an aggregated flow there from, responsive to the marker packets.

Networks comprising multiple non-overlapping communication topologies are presented. The networks can include a fabric of interconnected network nodes capable of providing multiple communication paths among edge devices. A topology manager constructs communication topologies according to restriction criteria based on required security levels (e.g., top secret, secret, unclassified, etc.). Established topologies do not have overlapping networking infrastructure to within the bounds of the restriction criteria as allowed by the security levels.

A method of performing all-to-all collective communication scheduling includes scaling a max concurrent multi-commodity flow (MCF) framework by decomposing a MCF problem and parallelizing the MCF problem to perform a fast link-based all-to-all schedule computation. The method further includes computing a time-stepped version of the MCF problem for a host-based forwarding network topology, utilizing the time-stepped version of the MCF problem to create a direct-connect graph, and then using the direct-connect graph to compute time-stepped MCF schedules to manage a mixed topology. The method further includes identifying a direct-connect topology to perform all-to-all collective communication based on the time-stepped MCF schedules.