Patent ID: 7321981

Claim:
A method for automatically reconfiguring ports on line cards of an aggregation router in the event of a failure to at least one of the ports, the method comprising the steps of: organizing first and second line cards as a redundant pair of line cards, wherein each line card is a multi-port line card having a plurality of ports; coupling a first external device to a first port on the first multi-port line card and a corresponding first port on the second multi-port line card over a pair of first connections; automatically enabling the first port of the first multi-port line card of the redundant pair to assume responsibility for reception of data from the first external device in the event of a failure to one of the corresponding first port of the second multi-port line card of the redundant pair and its first connection to the first external device; and transmitting identical data over the pair of first connections from the first external device to the redundant multi-port line cards of the aggregation router.