Patent ID: 7492787

Claim:
A method of switching in a device between a plurality of local link elements provided at the device, the device communicating on an IP-based single broadcast subnet, comprising: when the device has an on-going communication in the IP-based single broadcast subnet via a first link element of the device having a first link-layer address, selecting a second link element of the device having a second link-layer address different than said first link-layer address, said on-going communication being identified by each local IP address of the device and including a transport-layer connection providing end-to-end communication between applications; maintaining, by the device, an interested host cache (IHC) by storing for each local IP address of the device an address of a foreign host computer in response to receiving from a foreign host computer a request for link address mappings of any of IP addresses of the device or sending by the device for link address mappings of the foreign host computer; and migrating, by the device, the on-going communication from the first link element of the device to the second link element of the device while maintaining said on-going communication by: locally in the device dynamically binding the second link-layer address of the device to same IP address, and notifying an interested host in the IHC, if any, of the second link-layer address of the device by unicasting an Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) reply message to the IHC host and for each local link element of the device notifying all other hosts on the single subnet by broadcasting a gratuitous ARP message on each local link element of the device.