Patent ID: 7808893

Claim:
A method performed by a computer comprising: detecting, by a virtual security device, a problem with a logical section of a first network device, the logical section including at least one interface and being associated with a group of network addresses, where each network address in the group of network addresses and each interface of the at least one interface are associated with a weight, where the detecting includes: identifying, by the virtual security device, whether the at least one interface is down, identifying, by the virtual security device, those network addresses in the group of network addresses with which the logical section is associated that are unreachable, accumulating, by the virtual security device, the weights associated with those network addresses that are determined to be unreachable and those interfaces of the at least one interface that are determined to be down to obtain an accumulated value, and comparing, by the virtual security device, the accumulated value to a threshold; and failing over only the logical section of the first network device to a second network device when the accumulated value equals or exceeds the threshold.