US 7,321,981 B1
Multi-port line card redundancy technique for an intermediate network node
Gary S. Muntz, Lexington, Mass. (US)
Assigned to Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, Calif. (US)
Filed on Feb. 28, 2001, as Appl. No. 9/796,046.
Int. Cl. G06F 11/00 (2006.01)
U.S. Cl. 714—4  [714/11; 370/216] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method for automatically reconfiguring ports on line cards of an aggregation router in the event of a failure to at least one of the ports, the method comprising the steps of:
organizing first and second line cards as a redundant pair of line cards, wherein each line card is a multi-port line card having a plurality of ports;
coupling a first external device to a first port on the first multi-port line card and a corresponding first port on the second multi-port line card over a pair of first connections;
automatically enabling the first port of the first multi-port line card of the redundant pair to assume responsibility for reception of data from the first external device in the event of a failure to one of the corresponding first port of the second multi-port line card of the redundant pair and its first connection to the first external device; and
transmitting identical data over the pair of first connections from the first external device to the redundant multi-port line cards of the aggregation router.