Patent ID: 7730029

Claim:
A method of redundant control plane synchronization in network node equipment having an active control plane and an inactive control plane, wherein the active control plane comprises an active control plane synchronization error logic module coupled to an error log and an active control plane database, and wherein the inactive control plane comprises an inactive control plane synchronization error logic module coupled to a tolerable attribute error list and an inactive control plane database, the method comprising: synchronizing a plurality of attributes between the inactive control plane database and the active control plane database by updating the inactive control plane database to mirror the active control plane database; detecting at least one error in the synchronization of said inactive control plane database and said active control plane database and sending the at least one error to the error log; using the inactive control plane synchronization error logic module to identify said at least one error and identify which of said attributes of said inactive; control plane database and said active control plane database caused said at least one error; using the inactive control plane synchronization error logic module to compare attributes that caused said at least one error to entries in the tolerable attribute error list; when any of said attributes that caused said at least one error are not in said tolerable attribute error list, determining the inactive control plane database to be intolerable for a redundant switchover, and executing a hard restart with said inactive control plane database; when all of said attributes that caused said at least one error are in said tolerable attribute error list, determining the inactive control plane database to be tolerable for said redundant switchover unless a maximum number of tolerable attribute errors has been reached; and performing a second synchronization, the second synchronization comprising: using the active control plane synchronization error logic module to make a back-up error log of the error log, synchronizing the active and inactive control plane databases to create a new error log, and comparing the back-up and new error logs, so that when the comparison is inconsistent, a hard reset occurs on the inactive control plane, and when the comparison is consistent, the inactive control plane continues to operate and an operator is notified that the inactive control plane database is in a compromised state; determining an error code associated with an occurrence of said at least one error; and determining a state of the inactive control plane database in the context of the at least one error to be compromised less than a maximum tolerable magnitude of compromization.