Patent ID: 8553527

Claim:
A method performed by a first network node of a network, the method comprising: sending an advertisement of availability to become a not-via address allocator, the advertisement including a system identifier of the first network node; receiving an advertisement sent from each of a plurality of other network nodes, the advertisements each including a system identifier of the network node sending the advertisement; determining that the system identifier of the first network node is greater than the system identifiers in the received advertisements; and responsive to determining that the system identifier of the first network node is greater than the system identifiers in the received advertisements, assuming the role of the not-via address allocator; receiving, at the not-via address allocator from a second network node of the network, a first broadcast message using a link-state protocol; identifying the first broadcast message as including a request to associate a not-via address to the second network node; assigning a not-via address to the second network node based on the identification of the request included in the first broadcast message, the assigned not-via address being a unique address to the network; transmitting a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) message to the second network node, the UDP message including the assigned not-via address, the not-via address specifying an alternative address for delivering packets without traversing a known failure in the network; receiving, at the not-via address allocator, a second broadcast message from the second network node including an address that is not the not-via address previously assigned to the second network node; responsive to receiving the second broadcast message, starting a timer; responsive to an expiry of the timer, determining whether a third broadcast message was received from the second network node while the timer was running, the third broadcast message including the assigned not-via address; and responsive to determining that the third broadcast message was not received, resending the UDP message including the assigned not-via address to the second network node.