Selecting and deduplicating forwarding equivalence classes

A network device comprising:

• at least one processor;
• and
• a memory communicatively coupled to the at least one processor, the memory storing instructions executable by the at least one processor to perform a method, the method comprising:
• A) identifying a plurality of groups, each group comprising routes that are associated with a same set of next hops;
• B) for each group, pairing sets of resilient adjacencies corresponding to the routes in the group to produce pairs of resilient adjacencies for the group;
• C) identifying a pair of resilient adjacencies from among a plurality of pairs of resilient adjacencies across all the groups;
• D) selecting a first resilient adjacency from the identified pair;
• E) programming one or more routes in a forwarding table that refer to the first resilient adjacency in the identified pair to refer to a second resilient adjacency in the identified pair;
• and
• F) removing the first resilient adjacency from a hardware table that stores the first resilient adjacency.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having embodied thereon a program executable by a processor to perform a method, the method comprising:

• A) identifying a plurality of groups, each group comprising routes that are associated with a same set of next hops;
• B) for each group, pairing sets of resilient adjacencies corresponding to the routes in the group to produce pairs of resilient adjacencies for the group;
• C) identifying a pair of resilient adjacencies from among a plurality of pairs of resilient adjacencies across all the groups;
• D) selecting a first resilient adjacency from the identified pair;
• E) programming one or more routes in a forwarding table that refer to the first resilient adjacency to refer to a second resilient adjacency;
• and
• F) removing the first resilient adjacency from a hardware table that stores the first resilient adjacency.