Patent ID: 7590136

Claim:
A network element for use in an optical communications system, comprising: a backplane; a plurality of cards in communication with the backplane, a first card of the plurality of cards having a processor element for executing instructions and a memory element for storing routing information, the first card distributing subsets of the routing information to other cards of the plurality of cards, a second card of the plurality of cards having a memory element for storing a subset of the routing information distributed by the first card and a processor element for executing instructions, the processor element of the second card accessing the memory element of the second card in response to the second card receiving a packet over a network, the second card determining a destination address from information carried by the packet, the destination address corresponding to a third card of the plurality of cards in the network element, wherein the second card routes the packet to the third card if the destination address is in the subset of the routing information, but if the subset of routing information lacks the destination address, the second card routes the packet to the first card and the first card routes the packet to the third card.