Patent ID: 7675848

Claim:
A method for managing a forwarding adjacency (FA) at an intermediate node in a data network, wherein the FA is associated with a primary tunnel spanning one or more data links in the data network and configured to carry traffic for the FA and a backup tunnel spanning one or more data links in the data network and configured to carry traffic for the FA in the event the primary tunnel fails, the method comprising the steps of: determining if the backup tunnel has carried traffic for the FA for a predetermined period of time, the predetermined period of time calculated based on a plurality of durations of down time experienced during historical failures along the primary tunnel, each duration of down time corresponding to a different one of the historical failures; and if the backup tunnel has carried traffic for the FA for the predetermined period of time, triggering a network topology change to cause convergence to a new network topology that does not include the FA, the new network topology to no longer use the primary tunnel or the backup tunnel, wherein the FA causes the primary tunnel to be announced as a link, and to appear to intermediate nodes as a single physical data link.