HIGH AVAILABILITY PACKET FORWARDING APPARATUS AND METHOD

摘要

A high availability packet forwarding router (102) for an internet protocol (IP) network, includes two control processors (104,106), one or more service termination cards (STCs)(112) with forwarding information bases (FIBs)(108,110), and a packet forwarding engine (214). The two processors run asynchronously in a master/standby relationship. Integrity of processes running on the control processors is monitored and the forwarding engine forwards packets according to a FIB maintained by an in-service one of the control processors. Hitless failover and hitless software upgrades are supported.