Patent ID: 7415627

Claim:
A method for handling failures in a data plane of a plurality of data planes, the method comprising: generating a partitioned data structure, wherein the partitioned data structure is generated from a control processor separate from the plurality of data planes, the control processor including a failure detector, and the data structure includes one or more partitions for each of the plurality of data planes, each partition including routes for a source data plane to a destination data plane; sending one or more partitions from the partitioned data structure to a data plane that is the source data plane in the routes; detecting a failure in a failed data plane in the plurality of data planes, wherein the failure detector is configured to detect the failed data plane in the plurality of data planes; and notifying data planes other than the failed data plane in the plurality of data planes that the failed data plane has failed, wherein the notified data planes do not send data for the one or more routes found in a partition associated with the failed data plane; detecting when the failure has been restarted; and notifying the data planes other than the failed data plane that the failure has been restarted, wherein the data planes send data for the one or more routes found in a partition associated with the failed data plane after being notified that the failure has been restarted.