1. A method for efficiently acquiring information used by first and second switching nodes of a heterogeneous network to implement transmission priority (TP) routing of data traffic over a connection network between end nodes of the network, the method comprising the steps of: establishing a bounded time interval during which a first switching node examines the data traffic over the network; triggering monitoring the data traffic during the bounded time interval for a defined data packet in response to a predetermined triggering event; and capturing a portion of the information from the defined data packet at the first switching node during the bounded time interval, the captured portion of information used to implement TP routing; wherein the predetermined triggering event is a request issued by one node of the network to a second node of the network for the second node to compute a route through the network between the one node and a third node of the network.