Patent ID: 7643426

Claim:
A method of selecting a path in a network, the method comprising: determining a static network metric for each of a plurality of overlay paths between two nodes in the network, wherein the two nodes comprise a source node and a destination node, wherein the network is divided into a plurality of regions based on a network metric and the plurality of overlay paths include overlay nodes in a region of the plurality of regions of the network that also includes the source node; selecting a subset of a plurality of overlay paths as candidate paths based on the determined static network metrics, and the selecting a subset of the plurality of overlay paths further includes determining whether any of the plurality of overlay paths is a candidate path of the candidate paths based on a comparison of the static network metrics for the plurality of overlay paths to a path switching threshold; if no overlay paths including an overlay node from the region of the source node are selected as candidate paths, determining the static network metrics for a second plurality of overlay paths between the source node and the destination node, wherein the second plurality of overlay paths include overlay nodes in a neighboring region to the region of the source node; and selecting a subset of the second plurality of overlay paths as candidate paths based on a comparison of the static network metrics for the second plurality of overlay paths to the path switching threshold; determining a time sensitive network metric for each of the candidate paths; and selecting by a device an overlay path from the candidate paths for transmitting data between the two nodes based on the determined time sensitive network metric for each of the candidate paths.