Abstract: The present invention addresses the aforementioned needs by providing a mechanism that improves operational efficiency through process automation. In one embodiment, process automation is enabled through rules that can be bound to system objects.

Abstract: A method and apparatus provides greater flexibility, scalability and manageability when multiple services are being supported by a Carrier Scale Internetworking (CSI) system by including processing that detects when connectivity to an Route Server Instance (RSI) host that is supporting an active RSI has failed and provides a replacement RSI host from a redundancy set. In additional, forwarders (i.e., core forwarder, edge forwarder, and/or default forwarder), upon detecting a change in the RSI host, connect to the new RSI host. RSI hosts in the redundancy set use a redundancy chain protocol to select the new RSI host to function as the active RSI. Note that an RSI host may be a virtual entity on a routing service control point (RSCP) that indicates that this RSI Host has the capability to become an active RSI, wherein an active RSI is an RSI Host that is running the RSI.