Patent ID: 8514850
Filing Date: 2013-08-20
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A communication device for a multi protocol label switching (MPLS) network, comprising: a signaling module for establishing MPLS connections within MPLS said network and a resource management module for allocating transfer resources to said MPLS connections, said signaling module being capable of establishing a point-to-multipoint MPLS connection tree with a plurality of leaf nodes of said network by transmitting a connection request message to said leaf nodes and by receiving a reservation message in response to said connection request message, said connection request message comprising addresses of said leaf nodes and characteristics of downstream traffic for characterizing the desired quality of service for a downstream data flow to be transmitted to said leaf nodes, said reservation message comprising a label for establishing a downstream point-to-multipoint MPLS connection, characterized in that, to bidirectionally establish the point-to-multipoint MPLS connection tree, the connection request message further comprises characteristics of upstream traffic in order to characterize the quality of service desired for upstream data flows to be received from said leaf nodes and a label for establishing an upstream multipoint-to-point MPLS connection, wherein said reservation message is received before said downstream point-to-multipoint MPLS connection is established, wherein the communication device is a branch node of the downstream point-to-multipoint MPLS connection and a merge node of the upstream multipoint-to-point MPLS connection, wherein the upstream multipoint-to-point MPLS connection comprises a plurality of upstream component connections from a plurality of the leaf nodes that are merged at the communication device, wherein the resource management module is capable of applying an upstream connection merge rule in order to determine a quantity of transfer resources allocated to the upstream multipoint-to-point MPLS connection upstream of the branch node, the quantity of transfer resources being determined as a function of the upstream traffic characteristics associated with the leaf nodes by applying the upstream connection merge rule.