Patent 8638657 was granted and assigned to Juniper Networks on January, 2014 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A network device may receive first qualification indicators, for a first signal, from all line cards of the network device. The network device may, in response to the first qualification indicators, transmit instructions to all of the line cards to use the first signal. The network device may further receive second qualification indicators, for a second signal, from all of the line cards. In response to the second qualification indicators, the network device may store information for the second signal in order to use the second signal as a backup signal.