Patent ID: 8406127

Claim:
A communication method for use in a dynamic network comprising: allocating network resources of a dynamic network to a data stream based upon precedence levels of other data streams desiring the same resources or already utilizing the same resources; finding routes from a source to a destination that can be supported at a given precedence; establishing a primary route for data flow of a given precedence from a first node to a second node of the network using resources available at that precedence or lower; establishing a secondary route for data flow from the first node to the second node using resources available at that precedence or lower; upon the occurrence of a failure of the primary route, switching the data flow from the primary route to the secondary route; establishing a new secondary route for data flow from the first node to the second node using signaling directed only to resources known to not be restricted to higher precedence levels; and repeating the above steps again and again as intra-node links of the network are established and broken, wherein each node is configured to track control signaling in a routing database and use this retained information to ensure that low precedence control is not forwarded into portions of the network known to require higher precedence; and secondary routes at each precedence level are monitored for quality by: sending low rate probe messages through the secondary routes; if a fault is detected in a secondary route, establishing a new secondary route, even though the new secondary route might never be used; and if a secondary route is preempted by a flow with higher precedence, a new secondary route is established for the lower precedence flow.