A bulk Soft Permanent Virtual Circuit (SPVC) trace processor is provided.
The bulk SPVC trace processor receives notifications of newly established
SPVCs and SPVC re-routing instances. The bulk SPVC trace processor submits
SPVC connection trace commands to corresponding trace source network
nodes, and retrieves trace transit list information therefrom. The
aggregate SPVC transport path information derived from trace transit list
information is stored and provided to higher network management and
service provisioning functions. The bulk SPVC trace processor may also be
employed to trace SPVC portions of Hybrid SPVCs. As SPVC connection
tracing is necessary subsequent to a failure, load balancing techniques
are used to spread SPVC connection tracing over time, network resources,
and network partitions to prevent weighting down the network. Network
planning and design functions previously built for Permanent Virtual
Circuit (PVC) provisioning may be seamlessly upgraded in migrating to
(H)SPVC connectivity.
