US Patent 7245619 Method and apparatus for managing routes

A method and apparatus for managing routes. A route manager receives a route to a destination, the route having been discovered by a routing protocol application. The route manager maintains the route in a route table and distributes the route to a second routing protocol application. In addition, the route manager maintains a subset of the routes in a second route table and distributes routes to a subsidiary application not having access to the routing protocol applications. The route manager recovers routes when a routing protocol application becomes inoperable by setting a timer when the routing protocol application becomes inoperable and purging routes when the route manager cannot confirm the routes upon expiration of the timer.