Patent ID: 7308503

Claim:
A router device for Internet Protocol (IP)-routing comprising: an active routing daemon running on a processor board; and a forwarding engine connected to the processing board and comprising at least two outgoing ports, the forwarding engine is configured to forwards incoming IP packets from neighbor routers to said routing daemon and outgoing IP packets from said routing daemon to the neighbor routers; at least one additional routing daemon acting as a standby router running on a different processor board with same affected virtual addresses for its ports as said active routing daemon; and a controller, which when a failure of said active daemon occurs, switches said standby routing daemon to be new active daemon connected to said forwarding engine, wherein, when said forwarding engine forwards said incoming IP packets, said forwarding engine replaces destination addresses of the outgoing ports in IP packets with a virtual address of said active routing daemon only in a unicast mode, and wherein, when said forwarding engine forwards said outgoing IP packets, said forwarding engines replaces virtual source addresses of said active routing daemon in IP packets with the addresses of the outgoing ports in the unicast mode and in a multicast mode.