Patent attributes
A mechanism for recovering from a failure in a network is disclosed, wherein a first set of information, such as a first packet, is initially sent from a source to a destination via a first route. As the packet travels along the first route, if a failure is detected somewhere along the route, a message is directed back to the source to inform it of the first route failure. In response to the message, the source reroutes one or more future packets intended for the destination to an alternate route rather than the first route. By doing so, the source routes around the failure to ensure that future packets will not be sent via the failed route. In addition, the source resends the first packet to the destination via the alternate route. By doing so, the source prevents the information from the first packet from being lost. By resending packets in this manner, the failure recovery mechanism makes it possible to not lose information during the recovery process.
