Patent ID: 8107363

Claim:
A method of accelerating failover of Virtual Private Network (VPN) traffic between Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) tunnels in a service provider MPLS network, the method comprising the steps of: determining a first label associated with a main MPLS tunnel designated to handle traffic for a VPN, the main MPLS tunnel extending on a first Label Switched Path from a source label edge router to a destination label edge router through at least a first intermediate label switch router on the service provider MPLS network; determining a second label associated with a standby MPLS tunnel designated to handle the traffic for the VPN in the event of failure associated with the main MPLS tunnel, the standby MPLS tunnel extending on a second Label Switched Path from the source label edge router to the destination label edge router through at least a second intermediate label switch router on the service provider MPLS network, the second intermediate label switch router being a different network element than the first intermediate label switch router; and passing VPN information from a control plane of a network element to a forwarding plane of the network element prior to occurrence of a failure associated with the main MPLS tunnel, the VPN information including VPN identification information and the first and second labels to be used to place the traffic for the VPN on the main and standby MPLS tunnels, the forwarding plane of the network element being configured to handle forwarding of traffic for the network element.