Patent ID: 7826367

Claim:
A method comprising: selecting a primary path on a first trunk for which to place a corresponding bypass tunnel on an alternate trunk; selecting one or more alternate trunks using a constraint-based trunk-selection algorithm; determining if at least one of the selected alternate trunks has sufficient priority bandwidth, wherein the priority bandwidth of each selected alternate trunk is the total bandwidth of the selected alternate trunk minus the physical bandwidth allocated to all existing primary paths on the selected alternate trunk with equal or higher holding priority values; in the event that the physical bandwidth of the primary path is larger than the priority bandwidth of each alternate trunk, notifying a network administrator; in the event that one or more alternate trunks have priority bandwidths larger than the physical bandwidth of the primary path, selecting an alternate trunk from the one or more alternate trunks having priority bandwidths larger than the physical bandwidth of the primary path based on a pre-determined order of priority bandwidth; comparing the priority bandwidth of the selected alternate trunk to a threshold value; in the event that the priority bandwidth of the selected alternate trunk is not greater than the threshold value, placing the selected alternate trunk in a standby status; and in the event that the priority bandwidth of the selected alternate trunk is greater than the threshold value, placing the bypass tunnel on the selected alternate trunk and setting a reserved physical bandwidth for the corresponding bypass tunnel on the selected alternate trunk.