Patent ID: 8270301

Claim:
A method of routing virtually-concatenated data traffic in a network comprising a plurality of nodes, wherein each node of the plurality of nodes is a network-level node separated from another network-level node of the plurality of nodes by at least one network-level link, the method comprising, for a given traffic demand to be routed from a source node to a destination node in the network, the steps of: determining two or more paths to route the given traffic demand, each of the two or more paths corresponding to a member of a virtually-concatenated group, wherein one path of the two or more paths comprises nodes of the plurality of nodes including a source node, a destination node and at least one other node coupled between the source node and the destination node, and further wherein at least two nodes of a set comprising the source node, the destination node and the one other node buffer at least a portion of the given traffic demand such that a delay is distributed over the at least two nodes of the one path; and routing the given traffic demand over the two or more determined paths; wherein the delay distribution is a function of at least one of the direction of the given traffic demand, the number of nodes that buffer at least a portion of the given traffic demand and a capacity of one or more network-level links.