Patent ID: 8369211

Claim:
A method comprising: operating, by network devices, in a normal mode by forming a virtual chassis that corresponds to a single logical network device, the virtual chassis including a master device and a backup device; detecting, by one or more of the network devices, an occurrence of a failure within the virtual chassis; executing, by the network devices, a splitting process to form one or more new virtual chassis based on the failure; determining, by the network devices, whether at least one criterion, of a set of criteria, is satisfied, the set of criteria including information indicating that the at least one criterion, of the set of criteria, is satisfied: when a particular new virtual chassis, of the one or more new virtual chassis, includes both the master device and the backup device, when the particular new virtual chassis includes the master device and a size of the particular new virtual chassis is greater than half a size of a maximum size of the virtual chassis, or when the particular new virtual chassis includes the backup device and the size of the particular new virtual chassis is at least half the maximum size of the virtual chassis; determining, by the network devices, that the particular new virtual chassis operates as a functioning virtual chassis when the at least one criterion is satisfied, the functioning virtual chassis operating according to resources configured for the virtual chassis; and operating, by the network devices, as a nonfunctioning virtual chassis when the at least one criterion is not satisfied, the nonfunctioning virtual chassis operating in a pass-through mode.