Patent ID: 8200839
Filing Date: 2012-06-12
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method for allocating service labels, the method comprising the steps of: receiving, by a service label management system from a virtual routing and forwarding process, a first request for the service label management system to allocate a service label to the virtual routing and forwarding process, said first request containing request information that comprises an identification of the virtual routing and forwarding process and an attribute indicating a type of service label requested; searching by the service label management system, based on the request information, a database of previous requests from virtual routing and forwarding processes for allocation of service labels, to ascertain if the request information of the first request matches request information of a previous request for service label allocation; if the first request matches a previous request, assigning to the first request, a service label previously assigned to the previous request and passing the service label previously assigned to the previous request to the virtual routing and forwarding process; if the first request does not match a previous request, assigning to the first request a service label not currently in use on the network and passing the assigned service label to the virtual routing and forwarding process; and upon occurrence of a loss of data by a control plane, receiving, by the control plane from a data plane, request information associated with the requests for service label allocation and the service labels that were allocated by the service label management system in response to the request and stored in the data plane, to enable the control plane to recreate the database of previous service label requests and allocated service labels after the occurrence of the loss of data by the control plane; wherein the service label is an inner label to be used in an Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) based Virtual Private Network (VPN), the MPLS-based VPN using the inner label to identify traffic received from a Label Switched Path and using an outer transport label to switch traffic along the Label Switched Path.