Patent ID: 7698464

Claim:
A method of operating a route reflector in a data network, the data network comprising a plurality of nodes capable of communicating with each other, each node coupled to at least one unit of a customer network, the route reflector coupled to a plurality of client peer nodes and at least one non-client peer node, the method comprising: maintaining, for each VPN in which at least one unit coupled to a client peer node is participating, a route repeater send list of client peer nodes coupled to at least one unit participating in that VPN; receiving from a first client peer node VPN reachability information (VRI) for a first unit coupled to the first client peer node, the received VRI identifying a VPN in which the first unit is participating; reflecting the VRI to all client peer nodes on the route repeater send list for the identified VPN that are not the first client peer node; and reflecting the VRI to all non-client peer nodes.