Patent ID: 7225259

Claim:
A method comprising: establishing a connection between a customer premise router and a service provider router, wherein the service provider router determines where data from the customer premise router is destined; using in the service provider router an inner internet protocol (IP) destination address in a private IP packet received from the customer premise router to select which of the plurality of virtual private routers, service tunnel, and service tunnel session to use to have the private IP packet reach the inner IP destination address and having the service provider router encapsulate the IP packet in a data message; using a selected virtual router information within a payload of the data message to select from stored information which one of a plurality of customer premises routers to use to have the private IP packet reach the inner IP destination address; establishing a service tunnel between service provider routers, the service provider router being in a connectionless network, wherein the service tunnel transmits private IP traffic associated with hosts of the customer premise router, the transmission being transparent to the customer premise router and the hosts; and transporting private IP packets over the service tunnel in accordance with selected respective private IP services.