Patent ID: 7586838

Claim:
A packet inspection engine system, comprising: n active application service engines (active ASEs) configured to inspect packets from Internet protocol (IP) packet flows of subscribers and to multicast updated changes of subscriber state; and m redundant application services engines (redundant ASEs) configured to maintain received changes of subscriber state as active ASE status data for each active ASE; wherein at least one of said ASEs is configured to be elected by said ASEs to be a master ASP, to operate differently on election from other ones of the m redundant ASEs. To detect on election failures of any of the active ASEs, and to selectively activate on detection one of the other m redundant ASEs to substitute for a failed ASEI; wherein n and m are integer; and wherein the ASEs are configured, such that, the master ASP forms a redundancy group of ASEs, determine how many active ASEs are needed in the redundancy group to support an operational configuration of the IP packet flows of subscribers, determine if there is already an active ASE performing a determined configured function and if so, allow the function to continue to be performed and assign other configured functions to available ASEs not assigned a configuration.