Patent ID: 7688712

Claim:
A method, performed by a computer including a physical computer-readable medium including computer-executable instructions, for managing a set of network access points maintained by a single redundantly connected node on an industrial local area network (LAN) comprising the steps of: primarily testing bi-directional communicative connectivity, via the LAN, between a primary and a backup redundant network access point of the set of network access points; secondarily testing, upon determining loss of communicative connectivity between the primary and backup network access points, connectivity between the set of network access points and a set of nodes on the LAN to which the redundantly connected node previously communicated; designating a current primary network access point based upon results of the secondarily testing step; and binding a first set of connections to the current primary network access point, wherein the first set of connections are re-bound to a newly designated current primary network access from a previous primary network access point in the event that the current primary network access point specified during the designating step differs from a previously designated primary network access point.