Patent ID: 7782773

Claim:
A system to optimize metrics associated with links of a network that is routed utilizing a shortest-path-first (SPF) routing method, the system including: a processor; a metric traffic engineering module, to identify at least one failure scenario applicable to the network, to identify at least one bandwidth level scenario applicable to point-to-point demands routed through the network, and to automatically calculate a metric for each of a plurality of links of the network, such that routings of demands through the network are optimized into the at least one failure scenario and into the at least one bandwidth level scenario, wherein the metric traffic engineering module being further configured to identify a plurality of failure scenarios and a plurality of bandwidth level scenarios applicable to the network, and to automatically calculate the metric for each of the plurality of links of the network such that the link utilizations resulting from demand routings determined by the metrics are below a predetermined threshold for each of the plurality of links of the network, for each of the plurality of failure scenarios, and for each of the plurality of bandwidth level scenarios; wherein the automatic metric calculation is further configured to calculate the metric for each of the plurality of links of the network such that a maximum link utilization for each of the plurality of links, for each of the plurality of failure scenarios, and for each of the plurality of bandwidth level scenarios, is minimized, and the minimization being performed over all possible choices of link metrics; and a changeover module coupled to the metric traffic engineering module, to signal network configuration changes to a network controller to rediscover the shortest path first routing through the network in accordance with the calculated metric for each of the plurality of links of the network.