SPECIFYING AND UTILIZING PATHS THROUGH A NETWORK

Traffic engineering refers to a process by which a network administrative program defines specific paths through the network for a series of data message flows. The approaches used to date include MPLS (multiprotocol label switching) techniques that add path descriptive information between layers 2 and 3 headers. Because of this location of the path description, MPLS is commonly referred to as a layer 2.5 protocol. The MPLS techniques, and other previous traffic engineering techniques, however do not readily support encapsulating tenant identifiers. Tying these prior solutions to a tenant will require other policies and multiple encapsulations for the overlay and underlay.