US Patent 9781030 Fast re-route protection using GRE over MPLS

Techniques are described for providing fast re-route (FRR) node and/or link protection along a primary label switched path (LSP) using generic routing encapsulation (GRE) over multi-protocol label switching (MPLS). An ingress edge router of a primary LSP is configured to encapsulate incoming packets into GRE with a destination address of an egress edge router of the primary LSP, and push a primary label onto the encapsulated packet for forwarding along the primary LSP. Upon a failover to a bypass LSP, a point of local repair (PLR) router swaps the primary label on the encapsulated packet with a bypass label. A merge point (MP) router then receives the encapsulated packet via the bypass LSP, and performs a lookup using the destination address of the egress edge router included on the encapsulated packet in order to determine a primary label for forwarding the encapsulated packet along the primary LSP.