Patent ID: 8179917

Claim:
A method, the method comprising: receiving, at a first network interface of a repeater, a first data packet transmitted from a client using OFDM signaling through a power line network, wherein the first data packet is in a first format and includes an uplink VLAN identifier; converting the first data packet from the first format to a second format by a power line module of the repeater; processing the first data packet in the second format by a network processor of the repeater, wherein the processing comprises: determining, by the network processor, at least routing information based at least on the uplink VLAN identifier of the packet and mapping the uplink VLAN identifier to a VLAN identifier of the client; and updating the first data packet by the network processor to include the VLAN identifier for the client; converting the processed first data packet from the second format to the first format; and sending the processed first data packet to the power line network through the first network interface to a gateway.