Patent ID: 7068595

Claim:
A method for facilitating instant failover during data packet routing by employing a flooding protocol to send data packets between a source and a destination, the method comprising: receiving a data packet at an intermediate node located between the source and the destination, wherein the data packet is enroute from the source to the destination; wherein the data packet is received from a first neighboring node; determining whether the data packet has been seen before at the intermediate node, wherein determining whether the data packet has been seen before involves examining a sequence number, S R , contained within the data packet to determine whether the sequence number has been seen before, and wherein determining whether the data packet has been seen before involves examining a record, R, indicating the N possible sequence numbers preceding a highest received sequence number, S H , that have been seen before; and if the data packet has not been seen before, forwarding the data packet to neighboring nodes of the intermediate node.