Patent ID: 8018841

Claim:
A method for interworking an Ethernet Ring network with an Ethernet network with traffic engineered trunks, at least one of the traffic engineered trunk groups having an active path extending through the Ethernet network and terminating at a first location on the Ethernet ring network and a backup path extending through the Ethernet network and terminating at a second location on the Ethernet ring network, the method comprising the steps of: implementing two bridge nodes between the Ethernet ring network and the Ethernet network with traffic engineered trunks, a first of the bridge nodes terminating the active path of the traffic engineered trunk group and a second of the bridge nodes terminating the backup path of the traffic engineered trunk group; exchanging trunk group protection state information between the two bridge nodes to allow the two bridge nodes to implement a single virtual bridge node between the Ethernet ring network and the Ethernet network with traffic engineered trunks; and generating a flush message on the Ethernet Ring to cause the nodes on the Ethernet ring to flush forwarding entries from their forwarding databases that are associated with the traffic engineered trunk group to enable the bridge nodes on the closed loop to relearn MAC addresses associated with the traffic engineered trunk group.