Patent ID: 7889652

Claim:
A method comprising: calculating, with a first router, an amount of bandwidth available on a link based on bandwidth reserved for the link with a resource reservation protocol and unreserved bandwidth of the link utilized by traffic associated with other types of protocols on the link; generating, with the first router, a routing communication that includes (i) the calculated amount of bandwidth available on the link and (ii) a data field to specify that the calculated amount of bandwidth included in the routing communication accounts for both the reserved bandwidth and the unreserved bandwidth of the link that is utilized by the traffic associated with the other types of protocols; transmitting the routing communication from the first router to a second router to advertise the calculated amount of available bandwidth; receiving the routing communication with the second router; with the second router, selecting a path with sufficient bandwidth availability through the network based on both the reserved bandwidth and the unreserved bandwidth of the link as specified within the data field of the routing communication; and establishing the path through the network.