Patent ID: 8239569

Claim:
A method comprising: setting, at a first router, a spoke request bit in a first packet, the spoke request bit indicating that the first router is available to serve a second router as a spoke router in a hub and spoke topology used by a link-state routing protocol; sending the first packet to the second router; sending from the second router a second packet containing an acknowledgement that the spoke request bit in the first packet was detected by the second router; installing on the first router a default route to the second router; forming a hub and spoke relationship with the second router, wherein the second router is a hub router of the hub and spoke topology used by the link-state routing protocol and the first router is a spoke router of the hub and spoke topology used by the link-state routing protocol; and based on the inclusion of the spoke request bit in the first packet, suppressing flooding of link state information from the second router that is the hub router to the first router that is the spoke router by sending empty database description packets from the second router that is the hub router to the first outer that is the spoke router.