Patent ID: 8811388

Claim:
A method of enabling a service instance to be applied to an MPLS network, the method comprising the steps of: exchanging routing advertisements by network elements in the MPLS network to enable the network elements to have a synchronized view of a topology of the MPLS network; advertising, by a first MPLS network element on the MPLS network, a domain-wide unique service identifier in one of the routing advertisements; and locally calculating, by a second MPLS network element from the second MPLS network element's synchronized view of the topology of the MPLS network, whether to install MPLS label forwarding state for the service identifier by determining whether the MPLS network element is on a shortest path tree rooted at the first MPLS network element, the MPLS label forwarding state being locally calculated by the second MPLS network element and including a first computed label to be used by the second MPLS network element to forward traffic on the shortest path tree to a destination, the MPLS label forwarding state further including at least a second computed label that a MPLS neighbor network element will use when forwarding traffic to on the shortest path tree to the destination.