Patent ID: 8503293

Claim:
A method comprising: monitoring, by a device, performance of a primary path, that includes a plurality of first links, based on one or more sessions for each first link of the primary path; monitoring, by the device, performance of a secondary path, that includes a plurality of second links, based on one or more sessions for each second link of the secondary path; determining, by the device, at least one of a degraded performance of the primary path, based on the monitoring of the performance of the primary path, or a failure of the primary path, based on a function-based session for the primary path; determining, by the device, an availability of the secondary path based on a function-based session for the secondary path; and automatically switching, by the device, a flow of traffic from the primary path to the secondary path when at least one of the performance of the primary path is degraded or the failure of the primary path occurs, determining the failure of the primary path and determining the availability of the secondary path being further based on one or more polling periods, and a polling period for the one or more sessions for each first link and the one or more sessions for each second link is different than a polling period for the function-based session for the primary path and the function-based session for the secondary path.