Patent ID: 7212526

Claim:
A system for managing multiple links in a label switched network, comprising: a plurality of wide band virtual links including a plurality of input virtual links and a plurality of output virtual links, each such virtual link including a plurality of physical links; a plurality of ingress nodes, each ingress node configured to receive packets and label the packets with associated labels; a plurality of label switching nodes, each label switching node configured to receive the labeled packets having respective associated labels via input virtual links and forward the received labeled packets based on their respective associated labels via output virtual links, each label switching node further including a control component configured to maintain label information relating to the associated labels and a forwarding component configured to perform forwarding of the received labeled packets based on the label information; and a plurality of egress nodes, each egress node configured to receive the labeled packets forwarded from one of the plurality of label switching nodes, wherein label switching nodes are identified as belonging to a label switched path and virtual links interconnect the identified label switching nodes belonging to the label switched path; wherein the physical links within each of the virtual links used to interconnect the identified label switching nodes are collectively regarded as a single entity by the control component with respect to the label switched path; wherein each associated label belongs to one of a plurality of classes; wherein the associated labels are used by a label switching node to forward packets belonging to a corresponding class onto one of the plurality of physical links of an output virtual link; and wherein a first hash function operates on an associated label of a packet to be forwarded via an output virtual link to thereby obtain a hash value, the hash value representing a physical link within the output virtual link used to forward the packet.