A method and apparatus are provided for improving redundancy and load sharing in control cards in the control plane of a communication node. An active control card which receives a request passes the request to the inactive control card for processing if and only if the inactive control card is synchronized with the active control card and the inactive control card is able to process the request. Redundancy and load sharing are further improved if the active control card separates the processing of managing the request and the determination of a response to the request onto separate processors on the control card. In one embodiment, the control cards are OSPF modules in a router. Redundancy is effected by more accurately synchronizing the link state database of each OSPF module, and by allowing the state of each neighboring router to be determined only by the active OSPF module and not independently by any inactive OSPF module.