Patent ID: 7730294

Claim:
A system, comprising: a geographically distributed virtual internet protocol router that comprises a plurality of gateways each comprising at least one data processor and at least one network interface unit, wherein at least one tunnel is provided for each gateway to communicate with at least one of the other plurality of gateways, and wherein the geographically distributed virtual internet protocol router is configurable to be administered as a single entity, and wherein a temporary tunnel is automatically reconfigured for each tunnel that was previously available to the geographically distributed virtual internet protocol router that becomes unavailable for communication, said automatic reconfiguration comprising reconfiguring the gateways which are part of a reconfiguration temporary tunnel route and without reconfiguring all of said plurality of gateways, where the geographically distributed virtual internet protocol router performs further actions, comprising enabling partial provisioning of geographically distributed virtual internet protocol router information to the new gateway over an internal network, automatically provisioning the remaining geographically distributed virtual internet protocol router information to the new gateway over an external network, and employing the provisioned geographically distributed virtual internet protocol router information to automatically join the new gateway to the geographically distributed virtual internet protocol router over the external network.