The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 12, 2012
Filed:
Oct. 30, 2006
Jean-philippe Vasseur, Dunstable, MA (US);
Carol Iturralde, Framingham, MA (US);
Jean-Philippe Vasseur, Dunstable, MA (US);
Carol Iturralde, Framingham, MA (US);
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
In one embodiment, a node (e.g., a grooming node) determines a set of attribute groups (AGs) of existing child tunnels through the network, where an AG is a group of one or more compatible attributes among child tunnels, e.g., excluding bandwidth. The grooming node also determines a set of corresponding child tunnels that belong to a particular AG and that follow a shared path segment through the network, and may establish an hierarchical tunnel that encapsulates the set of corresponding child tunnels along the shared path segment. In another embodiment, a node requests that the one or more intermediate nodes of the hierarchical tunnel each remove the state of a child tunnel without sending any error messages, and sends refresh messages encapsulated within the hierarchical tunnel in a manner that allows a tail-end node to continue any necessary propagation of refresh messages along the child tunnel.