Synchronizing multiple instances of a forwarding information base (FIB) using sequence numbers

Synchronizing multiple instances of an FIB in a network node that has a distributed processing architecture involves associating sequence numbers with all of the FIB entries that are stored with each instance of the FIB and using the sequence numbers that are associated with the FIB entries to determine the most current FIB entry. In one embodiment, the sequence numbers are used to determine the most current FIB entry among two matching FIB entries that have matching information (i.e., matching destination IP addresses and masks). In another embodiment, the sequence numbers are used to identify a line card with the most current FIB entry.