Method and system for label-based packet forwarding among multiple forwarding elements

A method comprising:

• determining a path through one or more of a plurality of forwarding elements from an ingress port of one of the plurality of forwarding elements to an egress port of another of the plurality of forwarding elements when the ingress port and the egress port are not located on a same forwarding element;
• adding one or more entries to label switch tables associated with one or more of the forwarding elements in the path to label data packets for forwarding among the forwarding elements in the path;
• and
• wherein each entry in the one or more switch tables specifies deducting one from the Time to Live (TTL) indicator for the data packet when the data packet arrives at a first one of the plurality of forwarding elements and deducting zero from the TTL indicator for the data packet if the data packet is forwarded to another of the plurality of forwarding elements.

An article of manufacture comprising:

• a machine accessible medium encoded with program code when executed by a machine causes the machine to
• determine a path through one or more of a plurality of forwarding elements from an ingress port of one of the plurality of forwarding elements to an egress port of another of the plurality of forwarding elements when the ingress port and the egress port are not located on a same forwarding element;
• add one or more entries to label switch tables associated with one or more of the forwarding elements in the path to label data packets for forwarding among the forwarding elements in the path;
• deduct one from the Time to Live (TTL) indicator for the data packet when the data packet arrives at a first one of the plurality of forwarding elements;
• and
• deduct zero from the TTL indicator for the data packet if the data packet is forwarded to another of the plurality of forwarding elements.

A method comprising:

• receiving a data packet on an ingress port of one of a plurality of forwarding elements from a network;
• deducting one from the Time to Live (TTL) indicator for the data packet when the data packet is received on the ingress port;
• determining a path for the data packet through one or more of a plurality of forwarding elements from the ingress port of one of the plurality of forwarding elements to an egress port of another of the plurality of forwarding elements when the ingress port and the egress port are not located on a same forwarding element;
• labeling the data packet for forwarding among two or more of the plurality of forwarding elements;
• forwarding the data packet through the two or more of the plurality of forwarding elements from the ingress port at which the data packet was received to the egress port from which the data packet will be transmitted to a next hop in the network;
• deducting zero from the TTL indicator for the data packet when the data packet is forwarded to one of the two or more forwarding elements;
• removing the inter-forwarding label from the data packet;
• and
• transmitting the data packet from the egress port to the next hop in the network.