Abstract: The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for synchronizing local databases maintained control plane (CP) nodes in a GMPLS network. CP nodes that are not involved in path computation do not need to store the TE information contained in opaque link state advertisements (LSAs). These CP nodes only store that part of an opaque LS which is used during the flooding procedure to verify if the LS is new or updated. This verification is based on a few fields of the LSA that contain link state (LS) identifying information. A CP node that is not involved in path computation stores only the LS identifying information and discards the remainder after the LSA is relayed to it neighbor CP nodes.

Abstract: In a provider backbone-traffic engineering network, a method and a bridge node are provided for setting up path between edge bridges connected to customer premises. A first edge bridge advertises towards peer edge bridges a tuple comprising a port identity and a layer two address. When it needs to set up a path towards the first edge bridge, one of the peer edge bridges uses information in the tuple to compute a path label.