Patent ID: 7567512
Filing Date: 2009-07-28
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method comprising: calculating, with a first router, an amount of bandwidth available on a link based on bandwidth reserved for the link with a resource reservation protocol and unreserved bandwidth of the link utilized by traffic associated with other types of protocols on the link; generating, with the first router, a routing communication that includes (i) the calculated amount of bandwidth available on the link and (ii) a data field to specify that the calculated amount of bandwidth included in the routing communication accounts for both the reserved bandwidth and the unreserved bandwidth of the link that is utilized by the traffic associated with the other types of protocols; transmitting the routing communication from the first router to a second router to advertise the calculated amount of available bandwidth; receiving the routing communication with the second router; updating, with the second router, a traffic engineering data structure with the bandwidth availability information included in the routing communication, wherein the traffic engineering data structure of the second router includes an amount of available bandwidth for a plurality of links, and wherein the traffic engineering data includes data indicating for each of the links whether the amount of available bandwidth accounts for both the reserved bandwidth of the link and the unreserved bandwidth of the link that is utilized by the traffic associated with the other types of protocols; with the second router, identifying a path with sufficient bandwidth availability through the network based on the data maintained in the traffic engineering data structure; and establishing the path through the network.