A network traffic engineering system comprising: a switch; and a controller configured to: maintain a monitoring segment identifier set including a sequence of adjacency segment identifiers defining a path for traffic intended for a destination device, wherein each adjacency segment identifier identifies a specific link of a network; maintain a forwarding segment identifier set corresponding to the monitoring segment identifier set, the forwarding segment identifier set including a compressed sequence of segment identifiers, together representing a compressed version of the monitoring segment identifier set such that the compressed sequence of segment identifiers, when pushed onto a label stack, will cause traffic having the label stack to follow the path defined by the monitoring segment identifier set; monitor a status of each link and/or node along the path defined by the monitoring segment identifier set; subject to determining that the path defined by the monitoring segment identifier set is valid, cause the switch to push the compressed sequence of segment identifiers onto a first label stack of a first data packet received by the switch prior to transmitting the first data packet; and subject to determining that the path defined by the monitoring segment identifier set is invalid, cause the switch to not push the compressed sequence of segment identifiers onto a second label stack of a second data packet received by the switch prior to transmitting the second data packet. a switch; and a controller configured to: maintain a monitoring segment identifier set including a sequence of adjacency segment identifiers defining a path for traffic intended for a destination device, wherein each adjacency segment identifier identifies a specific link of a network; maintain a forwarding segment identifier set corresponding to the monitoring segment identifier set, the forwarding segment identifier set including a compressed sequence of segment identifiers, together representing a compressed version of the monitoring segment identifier set such that the compressed sequence of segment identifiers, when pushed onto a label stack, will cause traffic having the label stack to follow the path defined by the monitoring segment identifier set; monitor a status of each link and/or node along the path defined by the monitoring segment identifier set; subject to determining that the path defined by the monitoring segment identifier set is valid, cause the switch to push the compressed sequence of segment identifiers onto a first label stack of a first data packet received by the switch prior to transmitting the first data packet; and subject to determining that the path defined by the monitoring segment identifier set is invalid, cause the switch to not push the compressed sequence of segment identifiers onto a second label stack of a second data packet received by the switch prior to transmitting the second data packet. maintain a monitoring segment identifier set including a sequence of adjacency segment identifiers defining a path for traffic intended for a destination device, wherein each adjacency segment identifier identifies a specific link of a network; maintain a forwarding segment identifier set corresponding to the monitoring segment identifier set, the forwarding segment identifier set including a compressed sequence of segment identifiers, together representing a compressed version of the monitoring segment identifier set such that the compressed sequence of segment identifiers, when pushed onto a label stack, will cause traffic having the label stack to follow the path defined by the monitoring segment identifier set; monitor a status of each link and/or node along the path defined by the monitoring segment identifier set; subject to determining that the path defined by the monitoring segment identifier set is valid, cause the switch to push the compressed sequence of segment identifiers onto a first label stack of a first data packet received by the switch prior to transmitting the first data packet; and subject to determining that the path defined by the monitoring segment identifier set is invalid, cause the switch to not push the compressed sequence of segment identifiers onto a second label stack of a second data packet received by the switch prior to transmitting the second data packet.