Patent ID: 8797844

Claim:
A method comprising: configuring, with a control plane of a router, a plurality of primary logical interfaces within a forwarding plane of the router and for a plurality of subscribers of one or more services provided by a service provider network over an aggregated bundle of two or more links such that each of the plurality of primary logical interfaces is associated with a respective first primary link of the aggregated bundle of two or more links, wherein each of the primary logical interfaces is configured to be associated with a respective primary scheduling module that schedules traffic associated with a subscriber of the plurality of subscribers for delivery downstream to the corresponding subscriber via the respective first primary link of the aggregated bundle of two or more links; and prior to detecting a failure associated with the corresponding primary scheduling module, configuring, with the control plane, a plurality of backup logical interfaces within the forwarding plane and for the corresponding subscriber of the plurality of subscribers such that each of the backup logical interfaces is associated with a respective second backup link of the aggregated bundle of two or more links and provides redundancy of connection over the aggregate bundle in the event of a failure associated with the corresponding primary scheduling module and permit the traffic associated with the subscriber to be forwarded despite the failure associated with the corresponding primary scheduling module, wherein each of the backup logical interfaces is configured to be associated with a backup scheduling module that schedules, in response to detecting the failure associated with the primary scheduling module, the traffic associated with the corresponding subscriber for delivery downstream to the corresponding subscriber via the respective second backup link of the aggregated bundle of two or more links, and wherein the plurality of primary logical interfaces and the plurality of backup logical interfaces are configured for each of the plurality of subscribers to be evenly distributed over the aggregated bundle of two or more links.