Patent ID: 8098665

Claim:
A method of automating virtual private local area network service membership discovery, the method comprising: establishing a multi-protocol label switching tunnel and targeted label distribution protocol signaling channel between a first provider edge device and a plurality of provider edge devices; adding a first virtual private local area network service site to a multi-tenant unit device associated with the first provider edge device; receiving a first label distribution protocol label mapping message at the first provider edge device from the multi-tenant unit device; broadcasting the first label distribution protocol label mapping message to the plurality of provider edge devices from the first provider edge device; sending a second label distribution protocol label mapping message to the multi-tenant unit device from the first provider edge device to establish a virtual circuit label switch path between the multi-tenant unit device and the first provider edge device; adding a second virtual private local area network service site to the multi-tenant unit device without sending an associated label distribution protocol label mapping message to the first provider edge device; and deleting a respective one virtual private local area network service site of the first virtual private local area network service site or the second virtual private local area network service site using a configuration command, wherein the multi-tenant unit device determines whether deleting the respective one virtual private local area network service site is a final deletion of the respective virtual private local area network service site attached to the multi-tenant unit device.