Patent ID: 8089866

Claim:
A link state routed network, comprising: a plurality of nodes; a plurality of links interconnecting the plurality of nodes; a constrained flooding backbone defined through the plurality of links, wherein messages are broadcast only on the constrained flooding backbone thereby reducing flooding of messages in the link state routed network; an administrative weight associated with each of the plurality of links; and a repair algorithm configured to repair the constrained flooding backbone responsive to failures on any of the plurality of links included in the constrained flooding backbone thereby avoiding a requirement to rebuild the minimal spanning tree responsive to the failures; wherein the constrained flooding backbone is defined as a minimal spanning tree responsive to the administrative weights of the plurality of links; wherein one or more of the plurality of nodes comprises a stub node, and each stub node connects to only one link of the minimal spanning tree and at least one other link not in the minimal spanning tree; and wherein the repair algorithm utilizes a stub node closest to a failure to perform a repair of the minimal spanning tree.