Patent ID: 8503329

Claim:
A method at a routing device, the method comprising: establishing an inter-chassis control plane channel session with a remote routing device, the routing device and the remote routing device being linked to a multi-homed routing device; synchronizing with the remote routing device by way of the inter-chassis control plane channel session to identify a state of a link from the routing device to the multi-homed routing device, the synchronization with the remote routing device including: identifying information associated with the link from the routing device to the multi-homed routing device; transmitting the information associated with the link to the remote routing device within the inter-chassis control plane channel session; receiving additional information from the remote routing device within the inter-chassis control plane channel session; and identifying the state of the link based on the information and the additional information; and advertising the state of the link by way of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), the advertising of the state of the link including: encoding the state of the link in a BGP update message, and advertising the BGP update message through the BGP protocol.