Patent ID: 7801135

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving, at a router that hosts a master transmission control protocol (TCP) module coupled through an inter-process communication (IPC) facility to a slave TCP module, information identifying a newly created TCP connection maintained at the master TCP module; assigning a unique connection identifier to the TCP connection; sending the unique connection identifier, in association with a source address value, destination address value, source port value, and destination port value, to the slave TCP module; sending, from the master TCP module to the slave TCP module over the IPC facility, one or more messages comprising one or more properties or statistics associated with the transport layer connection, wherein the messages identify the transport layer connection using the unique connection identifier, wherein the messages are not TCP segments; notifying an application running on the TCP connection that the TCP connection is available; wherein the master TCP module monitors system behavior to identify events and the slave TCP module uses the events to recreate state data; wherein the state data recreated in the slave TCP module replicates state data maintained in the master TCP module; wherein the master TCP module receives a request for state verification, the master TCP module sends a request for statistics to the slave TCP module, the slave TCP module retrieves one or more statistics values, the slave TCP module sends a responsive statistics message comprising the one or more statistics values to the master TCP module, and the master TCP module sends a reply message comprising the statistics values to a logically higher application; wherein the method is performed by one or more computing devices.