Patent ID: 9736278
Date: 2017-08-15
CPC Classifications: H04L

Claim:
1. A method in a gateway router implemented by an electronic device, comprising: establishing, by the gateway router, a Virtual Internet Protocol (VIP) tunnel with a scalable virtual IP appliance, wherein the VIP tunnel comprises a point-to-point link that is configured as a non-broadcast IP tunnel with a virtual IP address as a remote neighbor address of the point-to-point link; establishing, by the gateway router, a plurality of forwarding tunnels that terminate at a corresponding plurality of scaling units of the scalable virtual IP appliance; announcing, by the gateway router, information to an external network indicating that the gateway router has a direct link to an endpoint having the virtual IP address; receiving, at the gateway router, traffic comprising one or more packets having a destination address comprising the virtual IP address associated with the scalable virtual IP appliance; and forwarding, by the gateway router, each of the one or more packets via one of the plurality of forwarding tunnels to one of the plurality of scaling units, wherein the one or more packets are not transmitted via the VIP tunnel despite the one or more packets having the destination address comprising the virtual IP address.