Patent ID: 7319674

Claim:
An apparatus for communicating packets in a network environment, comprising: a network element operable to receive a packet and to identify a sequence number included in the packet, wherein the sequence number is associated with a state of one or more adjacent network elements, and wherein the network element is operable to exchange incremental state information with the one or more adjacent network elements if the sequence number included in the packet has not already been received, whereby full neighbor state updates are transmitted when a new neighbor relationship has formed between network elements, and whereby neighboring network elements that already have full state information ignore the full neighbor state updates while those neighboring network elements that are missing state information process the updates, and whereby a state when a full update of information is transmitted is described with a state sequence and subsequent transmissions of a protocol's neighbor state information includes only the state sequence, and whereby if the network element receives two subsequent neighbor state packets from the same neighbor with different state sequences, the network element can request a neighbor state update from a sender by sending a currently known sequence number to a transmitting object.