Embodiments of the disclosure are directed to implementing a router Media Access Control (MAC) Ethernet switch in a network. An Ethernet-over-Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) packet switch system includes a transport switching element communicatively coupled to one or more routers in a client layer and communicatively coupled via a photonic switching layer with a plurality of transport switching elements forming a transport layer; wherein the transport switching element is configured to flood addresses, in the transport layer, associated with the one or more routers to disseminate learned end-point addresses of the one or more routers so that service-based addressing is resolved by the transport layer. The addresses from the client layer are flooded in the control plane which is a lower layer control plane relative to the client layer to allow the transport switching element and the plurality of transport switching elements to use of the addresses.

A communication device performs communication over a communication path configured in a network, includes: a communication path identification section that can identify a communication path to which a received packet belongs; and a switching section that can forward the received packet to a network node associated with the communication path to which the received packet belongs, among multiple network nodes that can terminate the communication path.

A method for validation of a packet transport network includes performing a header space analysis, with input headers to obtain output headers from the header space analysis, between one or more ingress points and a particular egress point; determining disjointness of the output headers; and determining validity of a point-to-point connection property of the packet transport network based on the disjointness of the output headers. The header space analysis allows near-real-time validation that packet transport flows in an Multiprotocol Label Switching-Transport Profile (MPLS-TP) network have been correctly programmed on the switches by a Software Defined Networking (SDN) controller or other technique such that the correct label mappings have been made to carry a flow from a source to a destination, and all flows from any source to a destination are isolated from one another.

A network element (NE) in a network, comprising a memory configured to store time-based traffic engineering (TE) information associated with network resource reservations on a link attached to the NE in a series of time intervals each having a predetermined start time and a predetermined end time, and a processor coupled to the memory and configured to reserve, at a first current time, a network resource for a temporal tunnel service (TTS) on the link to carry traffic during a scheduled time interval subsequent to the first current time, wherein the scheduled time interval comprises a scheduled start time and a scheduled end time, and update, at the first current time, the time-based TE information in the scheduled time interval according to the network resource reserved to produce a first updated TE information in the scheduled time interval.

Indirect destination determinations for forwarding tunnel network packets may be performed. Tunneling may be initiated for network packets received at a packet processor according to a forwarding route or other prior packet processing stage, such as an access control list stage. A corresponding entry in a tunnel lookup table may be accessed to determine the tunneling to be applied to the network packet, such as Internet Protocol tunneling or Multiprotocol Label Switching tunneling. The corresponding entry may also include a pointer to a next hop address table that stores a next hop address for the tunneled version of the network packet. The tunneled version of the network packet may be forwarded to the next hop address.

A method of operation of a Multiprotocol Label Switching network involves, in an active node of the network, receiving a first data packet from a source node and forwarding the first data packet to a destination node. At the same time, the active node measures a residence time of the first data packet in the active node. The active node then sends a further data packet containing residence time information.

A gateway router can receive an Interest that includes a location-independent name for a data collection. If the Interest does not include an Anchor Identifier, the gateway router can perform a lookup operation in a name-prefix forwarding-information base (NP-FIB) to select an Anchor Identifier for a target anchor node, and to select an interface for forwarding the Interest toward the anchor. The router can update the Interest to include the Anchor Identifier prior to forwarding the Interest via the interface. An edge or core router that receives the Interest can perform a lookup in a routing table using the Interest's Anonymous Identifier (AID) to obtain an interface toward the anchor node and a second AID that is to be used by the next-hop neighbor to process the Interest. The router may then update the Interest to replace the Interest's AID with the second AID prior to forwarding the Interest.

Methods, devices, and systems for mapping transport segment labels to packet network endpoints using a mapping server. In some implementations, an end point address in an edge domain is received from an edge router, a mapping of one of the end point address to a transport segment label is received from a network device, the mapping is stored in a non-transitory memory device, and the mapping is transmitted to the edge router.

In a network service provider environment, the service provider infrastructure is protected by separating internet routing from the default context and placing it within a virtual private network context. Packets received from the public internet are encapsulated for transit through the service provider infrastructure based on the packet source being the public internet. MPLS VPN technology may be used in the encapsulation technique. The architecture removes the public part of the underlay network and tunnels it through a new overlay. The result is that internet traffic is contained in a separate routing domain, hiding the network infrastructure from that untrusted service traffic that transits the network.

The present application discloses a method, a device and a system for establishing an LSP. The method includes: allocating, by a proxy node device, a label for a destination node device, generating a label mapping message carrying the label, an address of the destination node device and an address of the proxy node device, and sending the label mapping message to an upstream node device to initiate establishment of a first LSP from an entry node device to the proxy node device; stitching, by the proxy node device, the first LSP with a second LSP to form a third LSP from the entry node device to the destination node device, where the second LSP is an LSP established between the proxy node device and the destination node device.