Patent ID: 8625407

Claim:
A virtual chassis, comprising: a plurality of stacked physical chassis that operate in a manner so as to appear to a connecting network as a single, logical chassis; a first physical chassis of the plurality of physical chassis including: a first route processing module that is configured to operate in a virtual chassis management role to manage the virtual chassis, and that is configured to operate in a first physical chassis management role to manage the first physical chassis; and a second route processing module that is configured to operate in a first physical chassis standby role to transition to the first physical chassis management role in the event of a failure of the first route processing module; and a second physical chassis of the plurality of physical chassis that is stacked with the first physical chassis and that includes: a third route processing module that is configured to operate in a virtual chassis standby role to transition to the virtual chassis management role in the event of a failure of the first route processing module, and that is configured to operate in a second physical chassis management role to manage the second physical chassis; and a fourth route processing module that is configured to operate in a second physical chassis standby role to transition to the second physical chassis management role in the event of the failure of the third route processing module; wherein the second route processing module is configured to operate in a virtual chassis associate role to transition to the virtual chassis standby role in the event of at least one of: a status change by the third route processing module to the virtual chassis management role, and a failure of the third route processing module.