Patent ID: 7701845

Claim:
An apparatus for forwarding data in a data communications network, having as components nodes and links therebetween, the apparatus comprising: one or more processors; and a machine-readable storage medium storing one or more sequences of instructions, which when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform: while a failure component is still operational: obtaining a reachability metric between a neighbor node and one or more other nodes in the data communications network; creating a repair path between an instigating repair node and a receiving repair node around the failure component therebetween and a propagatable repair address for the receiving repair node is reachable by a repair path notvia the failure component; treating propagatability of the repair address differently via the failure component than via other components; wherein the repair path notvia the failure component is pre-computed while the failure component is still operational and does not include the failure component; wherein the propagatable repair address is propagated while the failure component is still operational; and wherein the propagatable repair address is propagated via the repair path notvia the failure component.