Patent ID: 7319672

Claim:
A method of label selection for end-to-end transport of label switched traffic through a communications network between a source node and a destination node, the method comprising the steps of: a) launching a request message toward the destination node from the source node, the request message including label availability indication indicative of labels available for use by the source node; b) extracting the label availability indication from the request message; and c) comparing the label availability indication with a label availability table indicative of labels available for a successive hop between the source node and the destination node, to produce an end-to-end label availability indication; whereby the end-to-end label availability indication is indicative of respective corresponding labels available for end-to-end transport of label switched traffic between the source node and the destination node; wherein the communications network uses wave division multiplexing (WDM) for transport of said label switched traffic, the label switched traffic being associated with labels for use in switching the traffic between the source node and the destination node, each label identifying a respective data transport wavelength.