Patent ID: 7983158

Claim:
A method for facilitating hierarchical bandwidth management in a hierarchical routing domain comprising a domain bandwidth manager and area bandwidth managers, the method comprising at an area bandwidth manager: detecting a topology change in a routing area affecting an intra-area path of a communication session; communicating to the domain bandwidth manager a topology change request indicating the topology change; receiving a response to the topology change request from the domain bandwidth manager; and updating link bandwidth usage information associated with the intra-area path based on the response to the topology change request, wherein communicating the topology change request comprises: for each communication session admitted in the routing area, computing an intra-area path between ingress and egress routers associated with the communication session within the routing area; and if an intra-area path is found determining available bandwidth information associated with the intra-area path based on bandwidth information associated with intra-area links forming the intra-area path and adding path information of the intra-area path and the associated bandwidth information to the topology change request; and if an intra-area path cannot be found indicating in the topology change request that the intra-area path cannot be found.