Patent ID: 9612854
Date: 2017-04-04
CPC Classifications: G06F,H04L,Y04S

Claim:
1. A method operating at a data center implemented as a virtualized environment of one or more virtual machines, the data center operative in a Software Defined Networking (SDN) architecture having an SDN controller, the method for virtualization of a remote customer premises equipment (CPE) client device coupled to the data center via a wide area packet-switched network, the method comprising: receiving at a virtual switch of the data center a configuration request from the SDN controller to create a new device port in a particular virtual machine of the data center, the new device port corresponding to an input/output (I/O) port of the remote CPE client device that is monitored by the remote CPE client device's virtual switch; responsive to the configuration request, creating the new device port and associated device file, wherein the new device port's name is derived from a tag of a Virtual Extensible Local Area Network (VxLAN) in which the particular virtual machine is logically organized; virtualizing the new device port corresponding to the I/O port of the remote CPE client device to the particular virtual machine to appear as connected to the particular virtual machine; and providing an application executing on the particular virtual machine with access to the new device port, wherein a data tunnel is established through the wide area packet-switched network between the remote CPE client device's virtual switch and the data center's virtual switch, the data tunnel having a first tunnel endpoint based on the remote CPE client device's address and the VxLAN tag and a second tunnel endpoint based on the data center's address and the VxLAN tag.