Patent ID: 7382738

Claim:
A method for assigning metric information to an abstracted network map comprising a set of abstracted links interconnecting respective pairs of nodes, each node representing a corresponding Network Element (NE) of an underlying network having a plurality of NEs interconnected by physical links, the method comprising: computing each available route through the underlying network between a first NE represented by a node of the abstracted network map and each of the other NE's represented by corresponding nodes in the abstracted network map; selecting, for each pair of NE's represented by nodes in the abstracted network map, an optimal one of the computed available routes based on local resource availability information related to the physical links in the underlying network; and for each abstracted link of the abstracted network map, assigning to the abstracted link respective resource availability information of the optimal route between the NE's represented by the respective nodes of the abstracted link; wherein selecting an optimal route comprises constructing a tree to span a graph of the data transport network, the tree being rooted at a root node of the graph representing the first NE and being iteratively expanded so that paths from the root node to other nodes in the tree correspond to routes of optimal resource availability with respect to the local resource availability information.