Patent ID: 8718053
Filing Date: 2014-05-06
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method comprising: receiving a packet at a node of a network device cluster, wherein the network device cluster comprises a plurality of nodes and the network device cluster operates as a single logical entity; making a replica of the packet, the replica of the packet corresponds to an egress port associated with a destination address of the packet; accessing a cluster database to identify a cluster link associated with the egress port; accessing a node vector table to identify a first node vector, the first node vector associated with the cluster link; extracting a second node vector from the packet; calculating a resultant node vector based on the first node vector and the second node vector, and the resultant node vector corresponds to the cluster link over which the replica of the packet is to be forwarded; replacing the second node vector in the replica of the packet with the resultant node vector; and forwarding the replica of the packet within the network device cluster based on the resultant node vector.