Patent ID: 9621460
Date: 2017-04-11
CPC Classifications: H04L

Claim:
1. A method for connecting a plurality of customer sites over a wide area network (WAN) of a service provider, wherein each of the plurality of customer sites includes a customer edge router, the method comprising: each of the customer edge routers establishing a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) peer session with one or more route reflectors; each of the customer edge routers announcing the following to the one or more route reflectors: the one or more route reflectors reflecting the one or more local routes, one or more tunnel IP addresses, and the preferred tunnel type and tunnel specific information received from each of the customer edge routers to the other ones of the customer edge routers; each of the customer edge routers installing the following that is received from the one or more route reflectors from a particular customer edge router: the one or more local routes, the corresponding one or more tunnel IP addresses of one or more interfaces of that particular customer edge router for which those one or more local routes belong, and the preferred tunnel type and tunnel specific information to reach that particular customer edge router; a first customer edge router performing the following in response to receiving a first packet from a first customer device that corresponds to a first local route in a first one of the plurality of customer sites, wherein the first packet is destined for a second customer device that corresponds to a second local route in a second one of the plurality of customer sites: the second customer edge router performing the following in response to receiving the first encapsulated packet: