Method and apparatus for automatic sub-division of areas that flood routing information

An apparatus for sharing routing information on a network with mobile routers, comprising:

• means for receiving at a local router all routing information at a certain level of detail for all routers communicating in a current flooding domain;
• means for determining a measure of scale of a flooding domain that includes the current flooding domain;
• means for determining whether the measure of scale exceeds a threshold;
• and
• means for dividing the flooding domain if it is determined that the measure of scale exceeds the threshold, said means further comprising,
• means for sending, over a particular link of the plurality of links, a router announcement message that indicates the local router is a flooding domain border router (FDBR),
• means for determining first summary routing information with less than the certain level of detail for a first plurality of routers connected to the local router through a set of one or more links of the local router different from the particular link, and
• means for sending the first summary routing information over the particular link in a link state message that includes type data that indicates summary routing information that crosses a FDBR.

An apparatus for detecting loops in routes that cross route information boundaries in a packet-switched communications network, comprising:

• a first network interface that is in communication with a packet-switched network for communicating therewith a data packet;
• a second network interface that is in communication with a packet-switched network for communicating therewith a data packet;
• one or more processors that can access one or more sequences of instructions when executed by the one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to carry out the steps of:
• receiving through the first network interface all routing information at a certain level of detail for all routers communicating in a current flooding domain;
• determining a measure of scale of a flooding domain that includes the current flooding domain;
• determining whether the measure of scale exceeds a threshold;
• and
• if it is determined that the measure of scale exceeds the threshold, then performing the steps of
• sending over a particular network interface a router announcement message that indicates the apparatus is a flooding domain border router (FDBR),
• determining first summary routing information with less than the certain level of detail for a first plurality of routers connected through a network interface different from the particular network interface, and
• sending the first summary routing information over the particular network interface in a link state message that includes type data that indicates summary routing information that crosses a FDBR.