Patent ID: 8116232

Claim:
A non-transitory computer readable medium storing computer executable instructions for controlling at least a portion of a network having a set of nodes, data plane resources of the network allocated to a data plane connection spanning a first subset of said set of nodes being controlled by a first control plane connection, said computer readable medium comprising: computer executable instructions for establishing a second control plane connection spanning a second subset of said set of nodes in such a manner that: said second control plane connection is established in parallel with said first control plane connection; the second subset of said set of nodes at least partially overlaps the first subset of said set of nodes; and at each node of the network spanned by both the first and second control plane connections, said second control plane connection shares data plane resources allocated to the data plane connection with said first control plane connection; and computer executable instructions for terminating the first control plane connection, such that control of said data plane resources of the network allocated to the data plane connection is transferred to said second control plane connection without disrupting said data plane connection, wherein said set of nodes comprises a number of nodes greater than one, and each of the first and second subsets comprise respective numbers of nodes, greater than one and less than the number of nodes in said set of nodes.