Patent ID: 8572665

Claim:
A method for transmitting video data over a packet based network, the method comprising: receiving, from a cell based network, video data associated with a virtual circuit, the video data transmitted over a cell-based network and comprising a video stream, wherein the virtual circuit is one of a plurality of virtual circuits of the cell based network, each virtual circuit associated with a different video stream; identifying a virtual local area network of a packet based network on which to forward the received video data by mapping the virtual circuit associated with the video data to a virtual local area network associated with the packet based network, wherein the virtual local area network is associated with a subset of nodes of the packet based network, the subset of nodes comprising a plurality of nodes; identifying label information associated with one or more label switched paths of the packet based network, for the purpose of forwarding the video data associated with the virtual circuit to the subset of nodes, by mapping the virtual local area network and/or the virtual circuit to the label information, wherein the virtual circuit is mapped to the virtual local area network, and the virtual local area network and/or virtual circuit are mapped to the label information, using a table identifying related virtual circuits, virtual local area networks, and label information; associating the virtual local area network with the corresponding label information relating to the packet based network using the table, wherein the label information is used by nodes in the packet based network to forward the video data to the subset of nodes in the packet based network.