Patent attributes
In a communications network of nodes connected by links, routing of traffic is done according to routing tables available to the nodes. The routing table for each node shows fields for destination nodes and for next hop nodes towards those destination nodes, and traffic is routed at each node according to values entered in those fields. The nodes modify the values in the fields according to messages received from neighboring nodes. This controls traffic flow in that values are raised on receipt of messages from neighboring nodes. If messages are received less frequently from a node, for instance because of congestion in the network or failure of a node, the values for that node will be relatively depressed and the network will tend to route traffic away from the node.
