Patent ID: 8891360

Claim:
A method comprising the steps of: retrieving, by circuitry of a source node in a mesh network, information indicative of topology of the mesh network, the information stored on a non-transitory memory, wherein the source node is a first node in a connection through the mesh network; identifying from the information, by circuitry of the source node, a working path from the source node to a destination node in the mesh network, wherein the working path carries data through the mesh network when there is no failure in the mesh network; identifying from the information, by circuitry of the source node, potential protection segments of the working path, wherein a segment is a sub-section of the working path comprising at least two nodes and one communication link on the working path, wherein a potential protection segment has at least one disjoint protection path available for the segment, wherein the disjoint protection path does not use communication links used by the working path; creating, by circuitry of the source node, a hypothetical network topology comprising the nodes of the working path and hypothetical links between the nodes, wherein each hypothetical link represents one of the potential protection segments identified, wherein the hypothetical links are assigned a weight; executing, by circuitry of the source node, a Shortest Path Algorithm on the hypothetical network topology to determine a shortest path through the hypothetical network topology; identifying as optimal segments, by circuitry of the source node, the potential protection segments represented by the hypothetical links determined as being in the shortest path by the Shortest Path Algorithm; generating, by circuitry of the source node, at least one signal comprising at least one message; and transmitting the signal comprising the message, by circuitry of the source node, through an output interface of the source node, to an input interface of at least one node in the mesh network, wherein the message communicates a need for resources in case of failure of the optimal segment of the working path.