Patent ID: 8335166

Claim:
A method comprising: analyzing a characteristic of a packet, wherein the characteristic of the packet indicates at least one of a group consisting whether the packet is transmission quality sensitive and whether the packet is transmission throughput sensitive; determining a weight relationship between a packet loss rate and a data rate for a route, wherein the weight relationship varies with the characteristic of the packet; and determining a route metric for the route based upon the packet loss rate, the data rate and the weight relationship, wherein the route metric is determined based upon the following equation: metric route = ∑ link = 1 n ⁢ metric link = ∑ link = 1 n ⁢ min link ⁢ ( p rate / ( a + b * rate ) ) wherein, metric route represents the route metric, metric link represents each link metric for each link of the route, n is an integer and represents a number of links that the route has, rate represents the data rate, p rate represents the packet loss rate under the data rate, a and b are parameters to determine the weight relationship between the packet loss rate and the data rate.