Patent ID: 7852771

Claim:
A method of forwarding frames at an intermediate network element on a communication network, the method comprising the steps of: receiving a Generic Framing Protocol (GFP) frame containing source route information at the intermediate network element from a connection having a first bandwidth, the source route information enabling the GFP frame to contain a switching context that will allow the GFP frame to be forwarded on the network by the intermediate network element without requiring state information to be previously distributed to the interior network element on the network; extracting, by the intermediate network element, at least a portion of the source route information from the GFP frame; and using, by the intermediate network element, said at least a portion of the extracted source route information to multiplex the frame with other GFP frames from other connections onto a second connection having a second bandwidth larger than the first bandwidth, and to forward the frame along with the other GFP frames on the second connection; wherein the source route information comprises a set of two or more egress tunnel IDs, at least one of which has local significance to the intermediate network element to enable the intermediate network element to identify the second connection.