Computer readable media and methods are provided for initiating a failover state in a network element. A failover is when the element's traffic is routed to a redundant element which takes over the functions of the element, and any session state information stored in the element is also transferred to the redundant element. If a failover occurs with an upstream element, a downstream element is not aware of the failover and does not transfer its session state information to its redundant element. By maintaining a database of historic usage information, the downstream element can determine that an upstream failover has occurred when the amount of data it is processing drops below a minimum usage threshold. The minimum usage threshold is based on the historical usage data and a relationship between a given time in the past and the current time.