Restoration Path Concatenation: Fast recovery of MPLS paths

A new general theory about restoration of network paths is first introduced. The theory pertains to restoration of shortest paths in a network following failure, e.g., we prove that a shortest path in a network after removing k edges is the concatenation of at most k + 1 shortest paths in the original network. The theory is then combined with efficient path concatenation techniques in MPLS (multi-protocol label switching), to achieve powerful schemes for restoration in MPLS based networks. We thus transform MPLS into a flexible and robust method for forwarding packets in a network.