Patent ID: 7792991

Claim:
A method of advertising a link cost in a data communication network having as a components nodes and links, in which a node carries out the computer-implemented steps of: maintaining link costs for the links, wherein the node calculates paths through the links and nodes of the network based at least on the link costs; detecting a change of state of an adjacent component having an associated link between activated and deactivated or vice versa; wherein, prior to the change of state, the node advertised to the network that the associated link had an associated link cost of a first value; in response to detecting the change of state, repeating two or more iterations of: (1) raising or lowering the associated link cost to a new value that is different than the first values; and (2) advertising to the network that the associated link cost is the new value; wherein for at least a first iteration of the two or more iterations, the new value of the associated link cost is less than a value that represents infinity; wherein the method is performed by a computing device at which the node is implemented.