Patent ID: 7230924

Claim:
A method for routing traffic in a network comprised of a plurality of links to selectively off-load traffic from congested portions of the network to portions that are less congested, comprising: identifying which of said links are congested determining, for each of said links, that a utilization for the link exceeds a predetermined parameter associated with the link, said predetermined parameter a maximum link utilization, the maximum link utilization associated with all of the links and associated with a bandwidth that is below a maximum capacity of the link; identifying traffic trunks that contribute to traffic of the identified congested network links; selecting rerouting traffic trunks where each of the rerouting traffic trunks are traffic trunks that contribute to the traffic of the identified congested network links; ordering the rerouting traffic bunks in congestion contribution order; and rerouting portions of the traffic in the rerouting traffic trunks that contribute to the identified congested network links sufficient to reduce said link utilization to a value equal to or below said predetermined parameter.