Microwave networks are unique. Unlike fiber, copper, or any other Layer 1 transport technology, non-standard and dynamically changing bandwidths along with complex link aggregation and protection schemes make microwave networks complex and different. Regular routers are not designed for microwave networks and are inefficient and ill-suited to handle traffic in such a network. They rely on slow, protocol-based notifications to gather data from the underlying transport network to optimize their behavior. This lack of an adaptive media awareness negatively impacts network performance, reliability and operations costs significantly.