Provided is a process including: obtaining, with a network controller, a current state of a network; causing, with the network controller, a graphical user interface to be presented that depicts at least part of the network graph and includes user-inputs by which a user requests changes to the network graph; receiving, with the network controller, a request input to modify the network graph; and modifying, with the network controller, the network graph and enforcing the modification.

A method is disclosed for more efficiently and economically transporting data on a network using network access links between the first switch, which is the entry point of the network, and an end-user device, which is either on a fixed link on a customer premises or is a mobile device. The method includes terminating one or more protocol sessions at the first switch and removing corresponding packet headers. The first switch creates a substitute packet, adding a substitute header that identifies the transport path and the communications connection. Removed headers are not delivered to the end-user device which processes received substitute packets into usable streams based on the substitute header.

Transferring data over a network includes identifying an application flow and mapping the application flow to a network bound connection.

A network apparatus comprising a trunk end point associated with an Ethernet-tree (E-Tree) service in a network domain and configured to forward a frame that comprises a tag according to the tag in the frame, wherein the tag in the frame is a root tag that indicates a root source of the frame or a leaf tag that indicates a leaf source of the frame, and wherein the trunk end point is coupled to a second end point associated with the E-tree service outside the network domain.

The present invention relates to a method for selecting a label switched path LSP, which is applied in an MPLS network and includes: determining an energy engineering parameter of a network element itself in the network, where the network element is a network element on any candidate LSP between a source network element and a destination network element; receiving, by the network element, Interior Gateway Protocol IGP messages sent by other network elements in the network, and obtaining an energy engineering parameter of each of the other network elements; and selecting, according to the energy engineering parameter of the network element itself and the energy engineering parameter of each of the other network elements, a transmission path for the source network element and the destination network element.

The embodiments disclose a method and apparatus of selecting a path for transmission from paths between a first LER and a second LER in the MPLS network. The method may comprise: obtaining state information of the paths between the first LER and the second LER, the state information may indicate that a path is in up state or down state; obtaining stability information of at least one of the paths between the first LER and the second LER, the stability information may indicate that a path is stable or unstable; and selecting a path for transmission based on the state information and the stability information.

Techniques are described for reusing downstream-assigned labels when establishing a new instance of a label switched path (LSP) prior to tearing down an existing instance of the LSP using make-before-break (MBB) procedures for RSVP. The techniques enable a routing engine of any non-ingress router along a path of the new LSP instance to reuse a previously allocated label for the existing LSP instance as the downstream assigned label for the new LSP instance when the paths of the existing LSP instance and the new LSP instance overlap. In this way, the non-ingress router does not need to update a label route in its forwarding plane for the reused label. When the new LSP instance completely overlaps the existing LSP instance, an ingress router of the LSP may avoid updating an ingress route in its forwarding plane for applications that use the LSP.

In a connection-oriented network a point-to-multipoint working path is established between a source node and a plurality of destination nodes using a number of working path intermediate nodes. A point-to-multipoint protection path is established for possible points of failure in the working path. Each protection path connects a first working path intermediate node upstream of a point of failure and destination nodes of the working path downstream of the first working path intermediate node. The point-to-multipoint protection path only connects to destination nodes of the working path and working path intermediate nodes which must be transited to reach the destination nodes of the working path.

In general, techniques for facilitating a distributed network (L3) subnet by which multiple independent control planes of network devices connected to physically separate L2 networks provide L2 reachability to/from a single L3 subnet. In some examples, a shared L2 network physically situated to connect a plurality of physically separate L2 networks “stitches” the L2 networks together within the respective, independent control planes of switches such that the control planes bridge L2 traffic for a single bridge domain for the separate L2 networks to the shared L2 network and visa-versa. Each of the independent control planes may be configured with a virtual IRB instance associated with the bridge domain and with a common network subnet. Each of the virtual IRBs provides a functionally similar routing interface for the single bridge domain for the separate L2 networks and allows the shared network subnet to be distributed among the independent control planes.

Techniques are described for establishing a second label switched path (LSP) instance of an LSP having a first LSP instance. In one example, for each downstream router designated for the second LSP instance of the LSP, the router determines whether the router is part of the first instance of the LSP and, if so, whether the first and second LSP instances for that downstream router share a common link to a nexthop router. If the first and second LSP instances share a common link to a nexthop router, the downstream router transmits a first message to the nexthop router, wherein the first message includes a suggested label. The downstream router receives, from the nexthop router, a second message, wherein the second message includes the suggested label. In another example, a label reuse indicator flag in a message from the ingress router causes routers on the second LSP instance to reuse the label of the first LSP instance when the same link is used to the upstream router for both LSP instances.