Patent ID: 7768918

Claim:
A network control method, comprising: receiving a packet at an edge networking device of a provider network; determining first and second VLAN identifier fields for the received packet; appending within the received packet a service VLAN tag, wherein the service VLAN tag comprises: a modified tag protocol identifier (TPID) field, which is the length of a standard TPID field, consisting of: a shortened TPID subfield, the length of which is less than that of the standard TPID field, the length of the standard TPID field being 2 bytes, for indicating the presence of the first VLAN identifier field, wherein the shortened TPID subfield stores a series of bits with the same value; and the first VLAN identifier field consisting of the remainder of the length of the standard TPID field, inserted between the shortened TPID subfield and a user priority field; a standard tag control information (TCI) field consisting of: the second VLAN identifier field, which is 12 bits in length; the user priority field, which is 3 bits in length, for indicating a packet priority; and a canonical format indicator field, which is 1 bit in length, wherein appending further comprises checking the received packet for a customer VLAN tag, if the customer VLAN tag is present, then inserting the service VLAN tag immediately before the customer VLAN tag of the packet; otherwise inserting the service VLAN tag before a length-type field of the packet; and forwarding the packet through the service provider network according to a VLAN identifier stored in the first and second VLAN identifier fields of the service VLAN tag of the packet.