Network Availability Enhancement Technique for Packet Transport Networks

Abstract

A packet communications network that transports a plurality of traffic over a plurality of server transport paths from a source to a destination, the network comprising: using a load distribution method to distribute each instance of traffic to an individual transport path, thereby avoiding reordering at the destination; enabling all the transport paths to carry the traffic; allowing the network to provision a preferred traffic distribution through a policy setting; and redistributing the traffic when a condition on one of the transport paths changes. Also disclosed is a composite transport group component comprising: a processor configured to implement a method comprising: receiving a server trail failure notification message; and performing a dynamic redistribution of traffic over a plurality of server trails, thereby transporting substantially all of the traffic associated with a class of traffic transported over the server trail associated with the server trail failure notification message.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.