Patent ID: 8594095

Claim:
A computer program embodied on a non-transitory computer readable medium, comprising: computer code for identifying data to be communicated over a network; computer code for generating at least one data packet for use in communicating the data over the network, wherein each data packet includes an 802.1Q Ethernet header; and computer code for modifying the Ethernet header to reduce a size of the at least one data packet, where the Ethernet header is modified by: identifying a plurality of data packets for a single customer-edge virtual local area network (CE-VLAN); at least partially removing a CE-VLAN identifier (CE-VLAN ID) from the Ethernet header of each of the data packets; and distributing the CE-VLAN ID across the data packets, such that a different portion of the CE-VLAN ID is included in each of the Ethernet headers of the data packets.