Patent ID: 8509235

Claim:
A method comprising: maintaining a data structure comprising one or more entries, each entry comprising a link layer address of a redirecting router corresponding to an established proxy-router association of one or more established proxy-router associations for redirection of packets; associating, at a link layer process, redirected packets received as arriving from redirecting routers identified in the data structure, wherein the redirected packets each comprise a link layer header including a source link layer address, and wherein associating redirected packets, for one or more redirected packets, comprises: accessing, at the link layer process, the data structure using the source link layer address of a packet to identify a matching entry in the data structure; and if the data structure includes a matching entry, marking the packet as a router-redirected packet and associating the packet with the matching entry; and using, at a link layer process, the association to determine the link layer address information in the data structure to construct link layer headers for returning the redirected packets to the redirecting router by: receiving, at the link layer process, a redirected packet returned from a higher layer process; accessing the data structure to identify an entry associated with the packet; and constructing a destination link layer address for the packet based on address information of the entry of the data structure associated with the packet.