Patent ID: 7895463

Claim:
A method comprising: in response to receiving at a first network element a packet of a network transaction from a client over a first network for accessing a server of a datacenter having a plurality of servers over a second network, performing a layer 2 network process on the packet and generating a data stream within the first network element; performing a layer-3 handshaking with a second network element via a lossless interconnect link coupling the first network element and the second network element; replicating the data stream to the second network element via the lossless interconnect link to synchronize layer-4 states between the first network element and the second network element and to enable the second network element to perform higher layer processes on the data stream with respect to the network transaction to obtain connection states of the network transaction; wherein the second network element is configured to operate as a redundant peer to the first network element; and wherein in response to a failure of the first network element, the second network element is configured to take over processes of the network transaction from the first network element using the obtained connection states without user interaction of the client.