Patent ID: 7502371

Claim:
A method, comprising: distributing at least one traffic flow from a respective ingress node to a respective egress node via at least one respective path in a communications network, each of said at least one traffic flow having at least one associated minimum service level requirement, said distributing performed locally at an at least one node and comprising determining, at a given node, path weights for paths available for traffic flows sent to said given node, each path weight being an inverse proportion of a static path cost of the at least one respective path, distributing said traffic flows from said given node to at least one neighboring node via respective links based on said path weights and dynamic link costs associated with said respective links such that a ratio of said dynamic link costs essentially equals a ratio of said path weights, and sending at least one traffic source node a back-off signal requesting said at least one traffic source node to send less traffic to said given node, if said given node becomes so congested that said given node fails to distribute the at least one traffic flow according to the at least one associated minimum service level requirement, receiving, at an access node, a request to admit a new traffic flow to said communications network, admitting said request, if an access node has not received the back-off signal redistributing the at least one traffic flow at said access node to at least one alternative path, if said access node has received the back-off signal, admitting said request, if said redistributing at said access node succeeds, and rejecting said request, if said redistributing at said access node fails due to unavailable alternative paths.