Nortel Networks Corporation

Nabila Ould-Brahim

Matthew Yuen

Scott S Pegrum

Gregory A Wilbur

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.

High-availability packet forwarding apparatus and method

A high availability packet forwarding router for an internet protocol (IP) network, includes two control processors, one or more service termination cards (STCs) with forwarding information bases (FIBs), and a packet forwarding engine. 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.

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Kanata, Canada

Nabila Ould-Brahim