High-availability packet forwarding apparatus and method

摘要

Failover protection is provided on the same facilities for a network connection passing through a high-availability router having shared resources managed by two control processors that respectively maintain a forwarding information bases (FIB). The two processors run asynchronously in a master/standby relationship. Integrity of processes running on the control processors is monitored and a forwarding engine forwards packets according to a FIB maintained by an in-service one of the control processors. If one of the control processors fails, the other control processor uses the same bandwidth on the same facility to continue forwarding packets for a network connection. Identifiers in each packet associated with the network connection are used to indicate the reserved bandwidth associated with the network connection.