Patent ID: 8325706

Claim:
A network system comprising: first routers, connected in a fully-meshed topology, at a first level of a multi-protocol label switched tunneling hierarchy; second routers at a second level of the multi-protocol label switched tunneling hierarchy, the second routers connected to the first routers in a partially meshed topology, where each of the second routers include: a first upstream label switched path segment that connects the second router to one of the first routers, a first downstream label switched path segment that connects the second router to a first edge router, and a first label switched path segment that connects the second router to another second router; third routers at the second level of the multi-protocol label switched tunneling hierarchy, the third routers connected to the first routers in a partially meshed topology, where each of the third routers include: a second upstream label switched path segment that connects the third router to one of the first routers, a second downstream label switched path segment that connects the third router to a second edge router, where the second edge router is different from the first edge router, and a second label switched path segment that connects the third router to another third router; and a hierarchical segmented label switched path to transmit data between the first edge router and the second edge router, the hierarchical segmented label switched path including: a forwarding adjacency label switched path including a subset of the first routers; a first label switched path coupled to the forwarding adjacency label switched path, the first label switched path including one of the first upstream label switched path segments, one of the first downstream label path segments, and one of the first label stream path segments, and a second label switched path coupled to the forwarding adjacency label switched path, the second label switched path including one of the second upstream label switched path segments, one of the second downstream label path segments, and one of the second label stream path segments.