Method and apparatus for communication path selection
A manner of selecting communication traffic paths through a LAN, WAN, or similar communication network. Traffic received at a source bridge is forwarded to a destination bridge along a communication path selected from a plurality of possible, preferably EHEC paths. The paths may be discovered by a breadth first search and stored in a path selection table in association with a sequential index number. The paths are selected, for example by assigning a path to a VLAN by determining V mod N, comparing the result to indices on a path selection table that associates an unique index with each of the plurality of communication paths, and selecting the path associated with an index equal to the result, wherein N is the number of paths in the plurality of paths and V is a group identifier. The selected paths may be stored in the path selection table in association with the respective VLAN, and any received traffic for that VLAN is forwarded along the selected path.
1. A method of selecting, for a group of communication traffic, a communication path from a source node to a destination node through a network comprising a plurality of contiguous communication paths, the method comprising:
determining lowest cost paths from the plurality of contiguous communication paths;
determining V mod N,
comparing a result of the determining to indices on a path selection table that associates a unique index with each of the plurality of communication paths, and
selecting a path associated with an index equal to the result, wherein N is a number of the lowest cost paths in the plurality of communication paths and V is a group identifier corresponding to the group of communication traffic.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the group of communication traffic is a VLAN.
3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising assigning the identifier to the VLAN.
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the group of communication traffic comprises a plurality of VLANs.
5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the method is performed by a processor of the source node and the table is stored on a memory device assessable by the processor.
6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising ordering the paths by bridge identifier prior to associating the paths with indices in the path selection table.
7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising determining how many paths N exist between the source node and the destination node.
8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising storing the selected path in the path selection table.
9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of contiguous communication paths are EHEC paths.
10. The method of claim 1 , further comprising forwarding data traffic received at the source node toward the destination node along the selected path.
11. A network node, comprising a processor and a non-signal memory device, the memory device comprising program instructions that when executed enable:
determining lowest cost paths from the plurality of contiguous communication paths;
determining V mod N,
comparing a result of the determining to indices on a path selection table that associates a unique index with each of a plurality of communication paths, and
selecting a path associated with an index equal to the result, wherein N is a number of the lowest cost paths in the plurality of communication paths and V is a group identifier corresponding to a group of communication traffic.
12. The network node of claim 11 , further comprising a plurality of ports for network communication.
13. The network node of claim 11 , further comprising a VLAN table for storing an identifier associated with one or more VLANs.
14. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing computer program instructions, which, when executed on a processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising:
determining lowest cost paths from the plurality of contiguous communication paths;
determining V mod N,
comparing a result of the determining to indices on a path selection table that associates a unique index with each of a plurality of communication paths, and
selecting a path associated with an index equal to the result, wherein N is a number of the lowest cost paths in the plurality of communication paths and V is a group identifier corresponding to a group of communication traffic.