Patent ID: 7839847

Claim:
A method of tracking a traffic flow in a network of label switch routers, the method comprising: receiving at least one control plane-related record at a collector device from a first router, the at least one control plane-related record including a label binding of the first router, the label binding of the first router including a first label stack, a label local to the first router, and a next hop network address exported from a Label Forwarding Information Base (LFIB) record stored in the first router, the collector device not receiving any data plane statistics accumulated at the first router; receiving at least one data plane-related record at the collector device from a second router, the at least one data plane-related record including label aggregated traffic data accumulated at the second router in addition to a corresponding second label stack and a corresponding source interface exported from the second router; determining, at the collector device, how Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS) traffic is configured to flow between the first router and the second router by comparing, at the collector device, the label binding of the first router with the second label stack and the source interface exported from the second router; and determining data plane statistics for the first router at the collector device based on the label aggregated traffic data accumulated at the second router and on how the MPLS traffic is configured to flow between the first router and the second router.