CPC H04W 28/0268 (2013.01) [H04L 43/062 (2013.01); H04L 43/087 (2013.01); H04L 43/0835 (2013.01); H04L 43/0858 (2013.01); H04L 43/10 (2013.01); H04L 45/302 (2013.01); H04L 45/50 (2013.01); H04L 47/2408 (2013.01); H04L 47/2425 (2013.01); H04L 47/2441 (2013.01); H04L 47/805 (2013.01); H04L 49/205 (2013.01); H04L 49/555 (2013.01)] | 14 Claims |
1. A method of forwarding a packet along one of a plurality of physical layer 1 (L1) network links used by a first forwarding node to connect to a wide area network (WAN) that also connects to a second forwarding node of the WAN, the method comprising:
at the first forwarding node:
identifying a particular service class to use to forward the packet to the second forwarding node through the WAN;
based on first and second load-balancing weight values computed from first and second metric values associated with the particular service class for first and second physical L1 network links, selecting one of the first and second physical L1 network links for the packet and the particular service class of the selected network link, each of the first and second physical L1 network links associated with a plurality of service classes including the particular service class, each service class of each particular physical L1 network link associated with a different quality of service (QoS) guarantee provided by the WAN to packet flows that use the service class to pass through the WAN on the particular link;
associating the packet with a sequence number of the particular service class of the selected physical L1 network link, wherein the sequence number comprises first and second portions, the first portion comprising a service class identifier and the second portion comprising a number from a sequence number range used for a plurality of service classes of the selected physical L1 network link; and
forwarding the packet along the particular service class of the selected physical L1 network link.
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