Patent ID: 7151773

Claim:
A method of communicating connectionless and connection oriented signals using at least one common network element, comprising: receiving connectionless and connection oriented signals from a plurality of source peripheral network elements at an ingress core network element; determining a signaling type associated with each received signal, the signaling type comprising connectionless signaling or connection oriented signaling; appending a transport label to each received signal at the ingress core network element based upon the determination of the signaling type, each transport label comprising: an indication of the signal's signaling type; a plurality of sub-transport labels, each sub-transport label identifying a single hop of a plurality of hops between the ingress core network element and an egress core network element for a connectionless signal or identifying a single path segment of a plurality of path segments between the ingress core network element and the egress core network element for a connection oriented signal, wherein the plurality of sub-transport labels comprise a stack of sub-transport labels, the top sub-transport label identifies the node identification useful in determining the next hop or the next path identification, and the bottom sub-transport label includes an interface identifier operable to specify the interface of the egress core network element between the ingress core network element processing the signal and the one or more destination peripheral network elements; and communicating the signals and appended transport labels toward destination peripheral network elements according to signaling procedures associated with each signal's signaling type.