Patent ID: 7613836

Claim:
A method for managing resources in networking, on a gateway platform, the method comprising: adding a field to an operating system kernel software procedure stored in a computer readable medium of the gateway platform, the field referencing a virtual router context; modifying the operating system kernel stored in the computer readable medium to provide heritability of the field referencing the virtual router context in at least one of a process and a socket; and modifying packet processing code to determine the socket with which an ingress packet is associated based on the virtual router context of the ingress packet; modifying the packet processing code to select a routing table based on the virtual router context of the socket sending an egress packet; and modifying the operating system kernel to designate a lead operating system kernel for a distributed host, wherein the distributed host includes a plurality of processors in the gateway platform that are assigned one Internet Protocol (IP) address so that the plurality of processors implement a single IP host, and wherein the lead operating system kernel performs tasks for the distributed host as a whole and not for any specific connection or port.