Patent ID: 9596175
Date: 2017-03-14
CPC Classifications: H04L

Claim:
1. A method, comprising: operating each particular physical line card of a plurality of physical line cards of a physical packet switching device according to a first operating version, which includes running a first line card routing instance virtual machine maintaining forwarding information for forwarding packets using the first operating version on said particular physical line card, and processing packets by one or more physical network processors operating based on microcode according to the first operating version on said particular physical line card; operating a physical route processor engine according to the first operating version, which includes running a first route processing routing instance virtual machine maintaining a first routing information base including exchanging routing information with other packet switching devices, and deriving and providing said forwarding information based on the first routing information base to each said first line card routing instance virtual machine; communicating packets among the plurality of physical line cards and physical route processor engine; while said operating each of the plurality of physical line cards according to the first operating version, running a second line card routing instance virtual machine maintaining forwarding information for forwarding packets using a second operating version on each of the plurality of physical line cards; and while said operating the physical route processor engine according to the first operating version, running a second route processing routing instance virtual machine maintaining a second routing information base, and deriving and providing forwarding information based on the second routing information base to each said second line card routing instance virtual machine.