Patent ID: 7177919

Claim:
In a digital communications network having network cards, a method comprising: controlling applications executed within the network, wherein controlling the applications comprises, in response to a state change message, performing a set of transitioning actions to transition each of the applications between one of a plurality of active states on an active card of the network cards and one of a plurality of standby states on a standby card of the network cards, wherein the plurality of active states comprises an active ready state, a quiescent state, and a no-provisioning state, the set of transitioning actions including: flushing data to a disk, synchronizing RAM with a disk database, synchronizing RAM with the standby card, and building RAM from the active card, wherein all necessary commands required by each of the applications are loaded into a memory of the active card for executing each of the applications during the active ready sate, wherein memories of the active card and the standby card are synchronized during the quiescent state, and wherein at least a portion of network management requests for configuring the active network card are rejected during the no-provisioning state; and subsequent to the transitioning, sending a state change confirmation message.