Automated traffic engineering based upon the use of bandwidth and unequal cost path utilization

A network element for improved load distribution in a network that includes the network element, wherein the network element is one of a plurality of network elements in the network each of which implement a common algorithm tie-breaking process as part of a computation used to produce minimum cost shortest path trees, wherein a topology of the network includes a plurality of network elements and links between the network elements, the method defining a bandwidth aware path selection, the network element implementing a method reduces the coefficient of variation of link load across the entire network, the network element comprising:

• a topology database is configured to store link information for each link in the network, a set of service attachment points is mapped to network elements in the topology for services individually associated with an equal cost tree (ECT) set and associated with per service bandwidth requirements;
• a forwarding database is configured to store forwarding information for each port of the network element, wherein the forwarding database indicates where to forward traffic incoming to the network element;
• and
• a control processor coupled to the topology database and the forwarding database, the control processor configured to process data traffic, wherein the control processor executes a shortest path search module, a sorting module, and a load distribution module,
• the shortest path search module configured to determine a set of equal cost shortest paths between each network element pair using the topology of the network wherein the shortest path search module is configured to determine a set of candidate paths between each of the network element pairs and to send the set of equal cost shortest paths to the sorting module,
• the sorting module configured to generate a path identifier for each candidate path, where the path identifier is constructed from link available bandwidth values lexicographically sorted from lowest value to highest value and to send the path identifier for each candidate path to the load distribution module, and
• the load distribution module configured to rank each of the set of candidate paths based on the path identifiers, to check whether a tie exists between highest ranked candidate paths by path identifiers, to store a highest ranked candidate path by path identifier in the forwarding database where no tie exists between highest ranked candidate paths by path identifiers, and to apply the common algorithm tie breaking process to highest ranked candidate paths by path identifier where the tie exists between highest ranked candidate paths by path identifiers.