Patent ID: 7756066

Claim:
A method of restarting a first network device having a plurality of ports for receiving and transmitting layer 2 data, wherein the first network device belongs to a network of network devices, the method comprising: when a restart of at least a restarting network portion of the first network device is imminent where a spanning tree protocol (STP) is no longer functioning for the first network device during the restart and can no longer alter an STP state of one or more restarting ports of the first network device's ports during the restart, maintaining an STP forwarding state of each restarting port that is in such STP forwarding state so as not to change such STP forwarding state to a blocking state before or during the restart under predefined conditions; and during the restart, each of the restarting ports of the restarting network device portion cooperating with its peer port of a second non-restarting network device that is a neighbor of the first network device so as to prevent layer 2 loops in the network.