US Patent 7940649 Techniques for graceful restart in a multi-process operating system

A method and apparatus is disclosed for graceful restart in a multi-process operating system. A transport protocol process, which is capable of restarting independently from the operating system, is executed in a network element. The network element executes a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) process, which installs one or more routes in a global Routing Information Base (RIB). When the BGP process detects that the transport protocol process has become unavailable, the BGP process keeps the one or more routes in the global RIB even though the transport protocol process is not available.