Patent ID: 8045547

Claim:
A single network element comprising: a control card, coupled to a plurality of line cards, having a set of instructions to cause the control card to, instantiate a first virtual router and a second virtual router in the single network element, wherein: the first virtual router includes a first routing table to be stored on the control card and a first routing protocol process, the first routing protocol process is to insert into the first routing table a plurality of routes, each route to indicate a destination and a next hop wherein at least one route's next hop is an inter-virtual router interface coupled to the second virtual router and at least one route's next hop is one of a set of one or more egress ports that each corresponds to an outgoing interface, the second virtual router includes a second routing table to be stored on the same control card as the first routing table and a second routing protocol process, the second routing protocol process is to insert into the second routing table a plurality of routes each route to indicate a destination and a next hop, the first virtual router and second virtual router are coupled within the single network element through the inter-virtual router interface, wherein traffic from the first virtual router destined for the second virtual router is configured to travel through the inter-virtual router interface and not travel through the set of one or more egress ports, and the first routing table is a separate routing table from the second routing table, and download one or more routes from the routing tables to different forwarding tables on different ones of the plurality of line cards; and the plurality of line cards configured to: store the forwarding tables, wherein each forwarding table corresponds to a different virtual router, and store different routes downloaded from the control card in the forwarding tables on the different line cards.