Patent ID: 8885462

Claim:
A method, comprising: in response to determining, by an ingress line card of a physical router including a plurality of egress network processing units, based on a lookup operation using a forwarding data structure on a particular Internet Protocol (IP) packet, that the particular IP packet is to be sent out over a bundled interface of the router from either of two of a plurality of egress network processing units associated with one or more links of a plurality of links with the bundled interface associated with a set of links including the plurality of links: sending the particular IP packet to each of said two of the plurality of egress network processing units; in response to determining by each particular egress network processing unit of one or more particular egress network processing units of the plurality of egress network processing units that said particular egress network unit is in the non-active state for communicating the particular IP packet from the bundled interface, dropping the particular IP packet; and in response to determining by a single egress network processing unit of the plurality of egress network processing units that the single egress network processing unit is in the active state for communicating the particular IP packet from the bundled interface, forwarding the particular IP packet from the router over a particular link of the plurality of links of the bundled interface; wherein the particular IP packet is sent out over a single link of the plurality of links of the bundled interface.