Patent ID: 8937961
Filing Date: 2015-01-20
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method of exchanging routes between a plurality of service provider networks with a route server of an Internet Exchange, the method comprising: receiving a route advertisement that conforms to a border gateway protocol (BGP) and that advertises a route from one of the plurality of service provider networks with an inbound processing module of the route server, wherein the route advertisement identifies a destination reachable by the route and defines one or more attributes providing topology information associated with the route; updating, with the inbound processing module of the route server, the route advertisement to add an optional field that stores a copy of the one or more attributes for the advertised route as original path attributes, wherein the optional field comprises an optional, transitive BGP path attribute that is designated as storing opaque values that are to be left unmodified by to a route processing module of the route server; processing the updated route advertisement with the route processing module of the route server to update routing information of the route server and produce an outbound route advertisement to advertise the route to one or more of the service provider networks, wherein the outbound route advertisement includes one or more attributes for the Internet Exchange and further includes within the optional field the original attributes without modification; processing the outbound route advertisement with an output processing module of the route server to replace the attributes of the Internet Exchange with the original attributes stored within the optional field; and outputting the outbound route advertisement from the route server to advertise the route to one or more of the service provider networks, wherein the inbound processing module, route processing module and the outbound processing module implement different aspects of the border gateway protocol (BGP).