Patent ID: 8743865

Claim:
A method comprising: providing route aggregation in a network comprising at least two network switches connected by a link; arranging, by at least one of the at least two network switches, virtual connection identifiers into groups based on a common prefix, wherein each of the groups corresponds to an outgoing port of a next network switch and routing of data is performed per group of virtual connection identifiers; allocating, by at least one of the at least two network switches, a virtual connection identifier at an incoming port of the next network switch; informing, by at least one of the at least two network switches, an outgoing port of a previous network switch of the allocated virtual connection identifier number; assigning, by at least one of the at least two network switches, each of the virtual connection identifier groups a unique common prefix; and defining, by at least one of the at least two network switches, a size of the virtual connection identifier groups based on a length of the unique common prefix, wherein the unique common prefix is static or includes configurable parameters that are set at network boot time.