Nortel Networks Corporation

Britney Charles

Ronald L Steeves

Chouinard Marc

In a packet communications network comprising primary packet and secondary communication networks, a method and apparatus are disclosed for using a primary path connection to exchange additional address information between routing nodes so that the routing nodes can discover secondary path connections between routing nodes that may be used for future communication. If a packet merits additional address information, additional address information relating to a secondary communication network address for a source routing node is included in the packet header of an outgoing packet. It is determined whether an incoming packet includes additional address information and if so, the additional address information is stored so that it is associated with the primary network address of the source host node of the packet. The primary network addressing information, and any secondary network addressing information, is passed to the route calculation component of the routing node. The route calculation component makes the routing decisions and the packet is forwarded to a forwarding engine.

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Nepean, Canada

Britney Charles