Patent ID: 7924715

Claim:
A method of exchanging Service Level Agreement (SLA) information between domains on a network, the method comprising the steps of: discovering first SLA information available in a first domain, the first SLA information being node-pair specific and relating to capabilities of the domain to provide service through the domain between a pair of border nodes; transmitting the first SLA information, from the first domain to a plurality of peer domains on the network, without the use of a trusted SLA broker; receiving second SLA information, by the first domain from each of the peer domains on the network, without the use of the trusted SLA broker; using the first SLA information from the first domain and the second SLA information from each of the peer domains to build a SLA database for the first domain; and when a new service is to be offered on the network that is required to span from the first domain to one of the peer domains, using the first and second SLA information in the SLA database to select a set of domains for the service.