Patent ID: 7620069

Claim:
A method for processing ingress data received by an edge device of a transport network from a local customer edge device, the ingress data belonging to a virtual private network having multiple channels corresponding to multiple customer edge devices, the method comprising: a) determining, with the edge device of the transport network, both a first label and a second label using channel information of the ingress data, the channel information having been added by the local customer edge device and identifying one of a first plurality of channels of the virtual private network; b) adding, with the edge device of the transport network, the first and second labels to the data to generate modified data; and c) using the first label to forward, with the edge device of the transport network, the modified data towards an egress edge device of the transport network wherein the second label is to be used by the egress edge device to associate the ingress data with both a destination device and one of a second plurality of channels of the virtual private network, wherein the channel information is a channel identifier, wherein the channel identifier used by the local customer edge device is decoupled from a channel identifier of the one of the second plurality of channels of the virtual private network, and wherein the edge device is a different node from the egress edge device, and is separated from the egress edge device by at least one communications link of the transport network.