Patent ID: 7551550

Claim:
a method of allocating protection path resources, comprising: obtaining a link vector for a plurality of protection paths, wherein the link vector comprises a plurality of link vector elements, wherein each of the plurality of link vector elements comprises an amount of protection bandwidth for working bandwidth from a specific shared risk group; determining a proposed link vector for each of the plurality of protection paths, wherein the proposed link vector comprises a plurality of proposed link vector elements, and wherein the proposed link vector indicative of allocating a respective protection path to a working path; determining a link cost based on a difference between the proposed link vector and the link vector, said determining a link cost step, comprising: determining a maximum link vector element; determining a maximum proposed link vector element; and determining the link cost based on a difference between the maximum proposed link vector element and the maximum link vector element; determining a path cost for at least two protection paths based on a sum of link costs associated with a respective protection path; selecting one of the at least two protection paths based on the path cost to provide protection for the working path, and allocating protection path resources responsive to the selected one of the at least two protection paths based on the path cost to provide protection for the working path.