In source routed or hop-by-hop routed protocol communication networks, when congestion is detected at a certain network element, a notification message is sent to nodes. The nodes keep track of congestion condition and generally have knowledge of the congestion, thereby allowing them to make more intelligent routing decisions, i.e., rate controlling messages, routing traffic around congestion, regulating admission at the edge of the network. The intelligent routing decision is based on the congestion condition indicated by a restriction level which is periodically and dynamically updated.