Patent ID: 7804791

Claim:
A method in a management node of handling link and node failures in a network having a plurality of nodes interconnected by links, wherein the management node has knowledge of a topology of the network, said method comprising the steps of: generating by the management node, a plurality of spanning trees; and utilizing the spanning trees by the management node, to handle the link and node failures; wherein the generating step includes: generating at least two different spanning trees, wherein at least one link is left unconnected in each of the spanning trees, and the unconnected link in one of the trees is connected in at least one of the other spanning trees; selecting one of the nodes as a central node for a predetermined spanning tree; successively selecting neighbor nodes and connecting the neighbor nodes to the central node; successively selecting further nodes and connecting the further nodes to the earlier connected nodes until all of the network nodes are connected in the predetermined spanning tree; wherein a node degree (De) is defined as the number of physical links connected to a given node, a node usage value (Us) is defined as a ratio of the total number of links originating from the node in all the trees and the degree (De) of the node, and each node in each tree has a Media Access Control (MAC) address, and the generating step also includes: selecting a first group (G) of nodes having a degree of the highest value among the degrees of all the nodes; selecting the only member of the first group given that the first group has only one member; when the first group (G) has more than one member, selecting a second group (G 2 ) to be the members of the first group (G) having the smallest usage value (Us); selecting the only member of the second group (G 2 ) given that this group has only one member, and when the second group (G 2 ) has more than one member, selecting the member of the second group (G 2 ) having the smallest MAC address.