Distributed Connection Establishment and Restoration

A method of implementing network-wide priority based connection restoration in a link state protocol controlled Ethernet network, the method comprising the steps of:

• storing, by nodes on the network, constraints and route information associated with connections that have been established on the network, the constraints containing priority information associated with the connections that have been established on the network;
• receiving a fault notification associated with a failure on the network, the failure affecting a subset of the connections that have been established on the network;
• calculating, by the nodes on the network, restoration routes for the subset of connections affected by the failure according to the priority information, the restoration routes being calculated by the nodes from the constraint information.

A method of establishing a new connection by a head-end node on a link state protocol controlled Ethernet network, the method comprising:

• flooding, by a head-end node, a link state protocol control message containing constraints associated with the new connection to be established on the link state protocol controlled Ethernet network, the constraints including at least a destination node on the link state protocol controlled Ethernet network associated with the new connection, a bandwidth associated with the new connection, and a priority of the new connection.