Patent ID: 6947375

Claim:
A IP network switching system, comprising: a first egress IP network card connectable to a switching device; a second egress IP network card redundant to the first egress IP network card and connectable to the switching device; and an ingress IP network card connectable to the switching device and having hardware-based logic for determining which of the first egress IP network card or the second egress IP network card is active; wherein the ingress IP network card is further connectable to a network node and receives, from the network node, address information corresponding to one of the first or second egress IP network cards; wherein the logic modifies the address information if the egress IP network card represented by the address information is inactive; wherein the first egress IP network card is represented by a first address, the second egress IP network card is represented by a second address which differs from the first address by only the least significant bit, and wherein the logic modifies the address information by modifying only the least significant bit.