Patent ID: 7668083

Claim:
A communications network comprising: at least one control station configured to: generate batches of forwarding tables, each batch of forwarding tables including a primary forwarding table and a plurality of backup forwarding tables, and forward the batches of forwarding tables; and a plurality of network nodes, each network node being associated with one or more outbound and inbound links and configured to: receive a batch of forwarding tables from the at least one control station, install the primary forwarding table from the batch as a current forwarding table, detect that a quality of one of an associated outbound and inbound link has changed, in response to detecting the quality change, generate a message instructing other nodes of the plurality of network nodes to switch to a backup forwarding table associated with the detected link, the backup forwarding table being selected from the plurality of backup forwarding tables received at each respective node, and transmit the message to the other nodes.