Patent ID: 8700801

Claim:
A method comprising: executing a routing protocol on an application-layer traffic optimization (ALTO) server to receive layer three (L3) network topology information defining routes to a set of endpoints of a network; aggregating, with the ALTO server, the set of endpoints into one or more topological groupings (PIDs), wherein each PID of the PIDs is associated with different endpoints of the set of endpoints; receiving, with the routing protocol, a topology information advertisement that specifies one or more routes and includes network address information identifying endpoints of the set of endpoints, wherein the topology information advertisement comprises a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) UPDATE message that specifies a BGP community attribute value for the identified endpoints; aggregating, with the ALTO server, the identified endpoints into a first PID of the PIDs based at least on the BGP community attribute value for the identified endpoints; generating, with the ALTO server, an ALTO network map that includes a different PID entry to describe each of the PIDs; and sending the ALTO network map from the ALTO server to an ALTO client.