Patent ID: 7308494

Claim:
A computer implemented method for reprovisioning an initial design for an interconnect fabric thereby forming a reprovisioned design, the initial design including an arrangement of interconnect elements for interconnecting a plurality of network nodes and the reprovisioned design having requirements for a plurality of flows among the network nodes the method comprising: attempting to associate each of the plurality of flows with a feasible path for the flow through the interconnect fabric; for each of a plurality of the flows not successfully associated with any feasible path, searching for available ports that are reachable from a source node for the flow via feasible paths in the interconnect fabric and searching for available ports that are reachable from a terminal node for the flow via feasible paths in the interconnect fabric, each pair of an available port reachable from the source node via a feasible path for the flow and an available port reachable from the destination node via a feasible path for the flow providing for a possible link for the flow between the pair of the available ports; and computing a value that is representative of a number of possible links for accommodating each of the plurality of flows that are not successfully associated with any feasible path, the value for at least one of the flows being greater than one, and selecting a flow for receiving a new link, the flow being selected from among the plurality of flows that are not successfully associated with a feasible path according to the value computed for each flow.