Patent ID: 7978708

Claim:
A method comprising: executing an inter-domain routing protocol on an intermediate network node to inject externally learned routes into a routing domain; issuing one of an inter process communication message and a function call, from the inter-domain routing protocol to an intra-domain routing protocol on the intermediate network node, to identify a local prefix used as an inter-domain next hop attribute for the externally learned routes injected into the routing domain; tagging the local prefix used as an inter-domain next hop attribute as an important route for convergence to indicate that the local prefix is to be processed before other local prefixes, that have not been used as an inter-domain next hop attribute, during convergence processing; and advertising the tagged local prefix throughout the routing domain to inform other intermediate network nodes in the routing domain of the importance of the tagged local prefix and that the other intermediate network nodes should apply high priority to the tagged local prefix to process the tagged local prefix before other local prefixes, that have not been used as an inter-domain next hop attribute, during convergence processing.