BGP peer network routers, and

a local BGP router, said local BGP router having a control plane containing an active BGP instance and a physically separated redundant backup BGP instance directly connected to said active BGP instance through a highly reliable Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) link, the local router further comprising a TCP socket to represent each BGP peer router connection at said active BGP instance and a cloned TCP socket to represent each BGP peer router connection at said backup BGP instance, wherein the router includes a circuit for performing routing in a network, and wherein the routing includes:

establishing BGP peer router connections;

running BGP protocol on one of two redundant physically separated control plane master control units, thereby establishing said one control unit as an active BGP instance;

establishing BGP peer connections on said one of two redundant physically separated control plane master control units with said active BGP instance and exchanging routing information with the peers, and bringing up the other said master control unit as a backup BGP instance;

establishing a link between said active BGP instance and said backup BGP instance;

signaling said active BGP instance to show its presence, but not signaling said BGP peer routers;

synchronizing said backup BGP instance with routing information from said active BGP instance and then cloning onto said backup BGP instance a TCP socket that represents each peer connection; and

processing said routing information at said backup BGP instance such that said backup BGP instance does not advertise said routing information such that, after completion of the cloning step, both said active and said backup BGP instances begin reading from the cloned sockets to learn routes from peer routers, but only said active BGP instance advertising anything to any peers.