Patent ID: 7929557

Claim:
A method comprising: maintaining, with a first router of a first area of a network, a label space defining a plurality of labels available for mapping to a plurality of addresses assigned to network devices within the network; reserving, with the first router, a contiguous set of the plurality of labels defined by the label space; mapping, with the first router, the contiguous set of labels to a plurality of first area addresses, wherein the first area addresses include those addresses of the plurality of addresses available for assignment to network devices within the first area of the network; and transmitting, with the first router to a second router different than the first router of a second area of the network different form the first area, an advertisement that advertises a summarized version of the mapping between the contiguous set of labels and the first area addresses as a prefix mapping between a label prefix that summarizes the contiguous set of labels and an Internet Protocol (IP) prefix that summarizes the first area addresses.