Patent ID: 8379613

Claim:
A system for providing layer-2 connectivity through a non-routed ground segment network, the system comprising: one or more bent pipe satellites configured to receive signals from one or more user terminals and to relay the signals at layer-1 of the OSI-model (L1); a non-autonomous gateway in communication with the one or more bent pipe satellites, the non-autonomous gateway configured to: receive and demodulate the signals relayed from the one or more bent pipe satellites, generate from the demodulated signals data packets having layer-2 of the OSI-model (L2) packet headers, generate a plurality of virtual tagging tuples within the L2 packet headers of the plurality of data packets, wherein each virtual tagging tuple includes an entity destination associated with an entity, and transmit, at L2, the virtually tagged data packets; and a first L2 switch of the non-routed ground segment network in communication with the non-autonomous gateway, the first L2 switch configured to receive the virtually tagged data packets and transmit the virtually tagged data packets to the entity via a second L2 switch of the non-routed ground segment network in communication with the entity based on each of the virtual tagging tuples associated with each of the data packets.