Patent ID: 7885207

Claim:
A method of simplifying the provisioning and management of network-based virtual private networks (VPNs), the method comprising: a service management system (SMS) of a service provider provisioning a plurality of virtual routers (VRs) distributed among a plurality of service processing switches of the service provider to support a plurality of network-based customer virtual private networks (VPNs) for a plurality of customers of the service provider by generating a routing configuration for each of the plurality of network-based customer VPNs based on (i) site reachability information for the plurality of service processing switches, each of which are coupled in communication with one or more sites of the plurality of customers and (ii) a global customer routing profile for at least one customer of the plurality of customers; receiving, at the SMS from a customer network management system (CNMS) associated with a customer of the plurality of customers, a custom routing profile for a network-based customer VPN of the plurality of network-based customer VPNs, the custom routing profile identifying one or more routing protocols to be used for one or more segments of the network-based customer VPN; and the SMS automatically reconfiguring the network-based customer VPN by programmatically generating appropriate routing configurations for VRs of the plurality of VRs partitioned to the at least one customer based on a subset of the site reachability information associated with sites of the at least one customer and the custom routing profile.