Abstract: Disclosed are methods and apparatus for guaranteeing restoration of traffic between one or more cable modems and a backup cable modem termination system upon failure of an active cable modem termination system are disclosed. Subscriber information associated with one or more cable modems are received from an active cable modem termination system. The subscriber information includes one or more subscriber identifiers. For instance, the subscriber information may include a primary subscriber identifier that identifies a particular cable modem as well as a secondary subscriber identifier that is assigned to high priority traffic such as that being transmitted in real-time. In addition, the subscriber information may also include a scheduling type that is further used to categorize the real-time traffic, such as into voice or video traffic.