Patent ID: 7716366

Claim:
A method for providing a virtual redundant router, comprising: enabling a user to define with respect to an actual non-owner router associated with the virtual redundant router one or more events and for each event a corresponding effect of the event on a priority associated with the actual non-owner router; and in the event one or more of said one or more events occurs, adjusting the priority based at least in part on the corresponding effect associated with the event; wherein an owner router and the non-owner router each owns a separate Internet Protocol (IP) or a separate Media Access Control (MAC) address, and the virtual redundant router is associated with a virtual router identifier (VRID) and associated with an Internet Protocol (IP) or MAC address associated with the owner router but not the non-owner router; wherein the non-owner router is configured to respond to control and management messages including ICMP pings addressed to an Internet Protocol (IP) or MAC address that is associated with and owned by the owner router, in the event the non-owner router becomes a master associated with the virtual redundant router based at least in part on the priority; and wherein the owner router owns as an actual network interface of the owner router the IP or MAC address associated with the VRID of the virtual redundant and the non-owner router, absent being configured to do so after becoming the master, will not respond to control and management messages sent to the IP or MAC address associated with the VRID, even upon taking over as the master router for the virtual redundant router, because the IP or MAC address associated with the VRID is not an actual IP or MAC address of the non-owner router; wherein adjusting the priority includes processing an explicit priority value associated with an event and a delta priority value associated with another event.