The preemption attribute determines whether a traffic trunk can preempt another traffic trunk from a given path, and whether another traffic trunk can preempt a specific traffic trunk.

Activate: To cause a traffic trunk to start passing traffic.

Establish: To create an instance of a traffic trunk.

A traffic trunk is an *aggregate* of traffic flows belonging to the same class.

A preemptor enabled traffic trunk can preempt lower priority traffic trunks designated as preemptable.

The adaptivity attribute associated with a traffic trunk indicates whether the trunk is subject to re- optimization.

That is, when a traffic trunk exceeds its contract as specified in the traffic parameters.

Essentially, a traffic trunk is an abstract representation of traffic to which specific characteristics can be associated.

Therefore, from a Traffic Engineering perspective, it is necessary to be able to administratively enable or disable traffic policing for each traffic trunk.

This invention relates to a telecommunications network in which automatic switching of telecommunications traffic to backup circuits is provided when faults are detected on a traffic carrying circuit.

The establishment and activation of a traffic trunk are logically separate events.

Modify Attributes: To cause the attributes of a traffic trunk to be modified.

A set of one or more LSP Tunnels which carries a traffic trunk.

An set of one or more LSP Tunnels which carries a traffic

A traffic trunk is distinct from the LSP through which it traverses.