Method and apparatus to speed up the path selection in a packet switching network
US5491690A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Jul 22, 1994 |
| Grant date | Feb 13, 1996 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jul 22, 2014 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04L45/04
- WIPO fieldDigital communication
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
Currently, routing algorithms compute all the available paths in the network, from a source node to a destination node before selecting the optimal route. The route computation is often time and resource consuming. Some paths are not acceptable due to the particular geographical configuration of the network. In the real world, large transport networks are not fully meshed. The present invention is based on the observation that networks are usually built around a hierarchical structure. A set of nodes, interconnected by high throughput lines, are used to build a `Backbone` (401) with a high degree of meshing to allow the redundancy and reliability required by the user. The other nodes or `local` nodes (404) are attached to one or several backbone nodes. It is the network designer responsibility, at the configuration time to define for each node what is its attribution: backbone (402) or local node (404). The list of the node attributions appears in the topology table (306) and is updated each time a node is added to or dropped from the network. The routing algorithm can take advantage of the particular network topology to drastically reduce the complexity of paths computation. For a…
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.