Patent ID: 8218553

Claim:
A method for traffic-engineering an overall label switched path (LSP) across a network from an ingress device to an egress device, comprising: computing for the overall LSP a plurality of sub-paths to the egress device that satisfy a set of traffic-engineering constraints; sending resource reservation requests to label-switching routers (LSRs) along two or more of the plurality of sub-paths of the overall LSP, wherein the resource reservation requests include an identifier associating the requests with the same overall LSP, and wherein the resource reservation requests each include an indicator specifying the requested overall LSP as a load-balancing LSP; receiving resource reservation messages in response to the resource reservation requests that specify reserved resources and labels allocated to the overall LSP to be used for forwarding network traffic to corresponding next hops along the sub-paths of the overall LSP, wherein the resource reservation messages include an identifier associating the messages with the same overall LSP, and wherein the resource reservation messages each include an indicator specifying the overall LSP as a load-balancing LSP; configuring a forwarding plane of the ingress device to store the labels and corresponding next hops for the sub-paths of the overall LSP; configuring the forwarding plane with load balancing requirements that specify how network traffic is to be load-balanced across the sub-paths of the overall LSP; receiving network traffic at the ingress device of the overall LSP; in the forwarding plane of the ingress device, load balancing the network traffic across the sub-paths by selecting from among the stored labels and corresponding next hops for forwarding the network traffic in accordance with load balancing requirements; and forwarding the network traffic with the selected labels onto sub-paths of the overall LSP.