Patent ID: 7606140

Claim:
A router, comprising: a partitioned data plane including a plurality of forwarding tables, each forwarding table including forwarding information that effectuates a data forwarding process through said router; a partitioned control plane including a plurality of routing tables operating under control of at least one routing protocol process, said routing tables including information that effectuates routing decisions with respect to said data forwarding process; a partitioned update agent plane coupled to both said partitioned data plane and said partitioned control plane, said partitioned update agent plane comprising: a control plane update agent module that maintains at least one redundant set of routing table information in a plurality of control plane update buffers that are coupled to said plurality of routing tables, wherein said control plane update buffers are located on said control plane, and wherein said control plane update agent module synchronizes said routing tables to each other; and a data plane update agent module operably coupled to said control plane update agent module to coordinate said forwarding information with said routing table information in association with a plurality of data plane update buffers that are coupled to said forwarding tables, wherein said data plane update buffers are located on said data plane, and wherein said forwarding tables are maintained, updated, and redundantly engineered independently of failures on said routing tables.