Patent ID: 7778204

Claim:
A first node for a communications network comprising a plurality of nodes interconnected by a plurality of links, the plurality of nodes comprising the first node, the first node comprising: one or more ports; and a processor, wherein: the first node and one or more other nodes of the communications network are internal nodes of a distributed source tree (DST); nodes of the communications network that are not in the DST network are external nodes; each port of the first node is configured to: (1) link the first node to a peer node in the communications network, wherein the peer node is either an internal node or an external node; and (2) send and receive link-state packets (LSPs), wherein each LSP comprises information for a link of the plurality of links; and the processor is configured to: (1) process a received LSP, wherein, the processing comprises: (i) forwarding the LSP to the other nodes of the DST network, if the LSP is received from an external node; and (ii) not forwarding the LSP to the other nodes of the DST network, if the LSP is received from an internal node; and (2) perform automatic maintenance of the DST network using at least one of reduced-set synchronization and recovery operation.