Patent ID: 7636304

Claim:
A system comprising: a network device comprising a plurality of interfaces configured to be coupled to a network link; and a plurality of distributed algorithm participants, wherein the network device comprises at least one of the distributed algorithm participants, the distributed algorithm participants are coupled to communicate with each other, each of the distributed algorithm participants is configured to implement a distributed algorithm, each of the distributed algorithm participants maintains a shared variable in order to implement the distributed algorithm, the distributed algorithm participants comprise a synchronizer participant and a non-synchronizer participant, the synchronizer participant is configured to calculate a new value of the shared variable and to communicate the new value to the non-synchronizer participant, and the non-synchronizer participant comprises: a local update packet module; and a global update packet module coupled to the local update packet module, wherein the global update packet module is configured to receive the new value of the shared variable and update a local copy of the shared variable to equal the new value of the shared variable.