LABEL-SWITCHED PACKETS WITH DEVICE-INDEPENDENT LABELS

In one embodiment, a device-independent label is associated with multiple network devices such that the packet switching devices in a network will forward a packet based on the device-independent label to one of these multiple network devices. In one embodiment, these device-independent labels include, but are not limited to, domain-identifying labels and forwarding-punt labels. In one embodiment, a domain-identifying label is defined as a label that identifies a plurality of network nodes without identifying a single particular network node, single particular interface, nor single particular link. In one embodiment, a first-domain forwarding-punt label is placed at the top of the label stack to identify to forward the label-switched packet to any one of a plurality of designated forwarding nodes corresponding to the first-domain forwarding-punt label (e.g., for sending to a packet switching device which will have forwarding information for the second domain-identifying label.).