Patent ID: 8811158

Claim:
A method comprising: identifying, by a network device, a plurality of common direct routes to computing devices that are associated with a common indirect route to the computing devices, wherein the common direct routes are different routes than the indirect route; generating, by the network device, a forwarding structure having a plurality of hierarchically arranged entries, wherein one of the entries within the forwarding structure is switchable between next hops of a next hop list, wherein the next hop list comprises: (1) a first reference that identifies a direct route structure, the direct route structure comprising a plurality of direct next hops associated with the common direct routes to computing devices, (2) and a second reference that identifies an indirect next hop associated with an indirect route to the computing devices; configuring, by the network device, the one of the entries of the forwarding structure to use the direct route structure referenced by the next hop list to route network data to the computing device through the plurality of common direct routes; forwarding, by the computing device, the network data according to the forwarding structure and the direct route structure; and responsive to determining that at least one of the common direct routes is no longer usable to forward the network data, performing a single update, by the network device, to the one of the entries of the forwarding structure to switch to using the indirect route referenced by the next hop list to re-route network data for all of the plurality of common direct routes to the single indirect route.