Patent ID: 8345552

Claim:
A communication traffic routing apparatus comprising: a metric information collector operable to collect, from metric information generated by at least one remote route computation element that is capable of computing routes for virtual connections between the routing apparatus and other routing apparatus over an underlying communication system, metric information associated with a plurality of different computed routes for a virtual connection with a destination; and a selection module operatively coupled to the metric information collector and operable to select, from the different computed routes, based on the collected metric information, a route for a virtual connection with the destination, the different computed routes comprising a currently selected route of an existing virtual connection that has been established with the destination; and the selection module being operable to re-optimize the currently selected route by selecting, based on the collected metric information, between the currently selected route and another one of the different computed routes that provides at least a minimum margin of improvement over the currently selected route, wherein the at least one remote route computation element comprises a route computation element that applies an optimal route selection mechanism to its generated metric information, and the selection module applies a different optimal route selection mechanism to the collected metric information.