System and method for restricted reuse of intact portions of failed paths

This invention relates to telecommunications network and more particularly to a messaging method therefor by which the origin and destination nodes of a failed path can receive information on which spans or links remain usable in the failed path. In a path-based distributed restoration algorithm provisioned telecommunications network, the origin and destination nodes of a failed path are apprised of the portions of the path that remain intact by "reuse" messages that are sent from the custodial nodes that are adjacent to the failure. As each reuse message reaches an intermediate node, the node ID of the intermediate node is appended to a field of the message so that, as the reuse messages are propagated along the intact portions of the failed path, a cumulative list of nodes that are encountered by the messages passing from the custodial nodes to the origin and destination nodes is set forth. Thus, the origin/destination node, when in receipt of a reuse message, can read from the field that has the cumulative list of nodes a description of the intact portions remaining from the original path. These intact portions are preferably used only for restoring of the same path that included the portions prior to failure and are not available for restoring any other paths that happened to fail simultaneously.