Disclosed herein is a method of establishing a path for data transport from a source network element (NE) to a destination NE in a communication network comprising a plurality of NEs and links between said NEs. The method comprises the steps of computing, at a central controller, a data path from said source NE to said destination NE along a number of intermediate NEs, sending, from said central controller, central control messages to all or at least a plurality of NEs among said source NE, said intermediate NEs and said destination NE, said central control messages including explicit path information, said explicit path information in at least some of the central control messages comprising more information than needed by the recipient NE for its set-up for data transport along said path, and sending distributed control messages between NEs of said path, said distributed control messages being based on at least one central control message received by one of said NEs. Said distributed control messages allow for distributing switch set-up information that was lost due to failure in the transfer of a central control message.