A fail safe temporary reorganization procedure for STARMAP routing tables in the event of a primary hub or link failure

Abstract

The challenge for STARMAP was to implement a simple temporary reorganization of the routing tables which would maintain the maximum interconnectivity of the network in the event of a primary link or hub failure. Since the original STARMAP packet switching or routing philosophy requires that a hub be responsible only for its own packets and that it needs no knowledge of events at any other hub then the routing table reorganization scheme must follow a similar philosophy. A primary hub routing table is changed in a very simple manner if it detects a failed transmission in one of its outlinks. The routing table is returned to its original condition as soon as the failed link or hub has been repaired.