Patent ID: 8717888

Claim:
A computer-implemented method to facilitate traffic load balancing among gateway routers providing an emulated switch in a fabric path switching network, the computer-implemented method comprising: upon receiving, at an access switch, a first network frame from an active gateway router in a group of gateway routers providing an emulated switch having an emulated switch ID and a MAC address, wherein the frame includes the emulated switch ID, adding an entry to a media access control (MAC) table on the access switch mapping the MAC address of the emulated switch to the emulated switch ID of the emulated switch; upon receiving, at the access switch, one or more link state messages from one or more respective standby gateway routers in the group, wherein each of the one or more link state messages includes the emulated switch ID, then for each link state message, adding an entry to a switch table indicating a link on the access switch over which the emulated switch is reachable, wherein the access switch is configured to load balance traffic to the emulated switch based on the MAC table and the switch table; forwarding a frame to one of the group of gateway routers, that is selected in order to load balance frames forwarded to the emulated switch, across the group of gateway routers; and upon receiving, from a given one of the gateway routers, a link state message indicating that the given gateway router is withdrawing from the group, removing the entry in the switch table indicating the emulated switch is reachable over the link corresponding to the given gateway router.