Patent ID: 7535926

Claim:
A method comprising: statically creating a layer 2 interface within a network device; authenticating user information received from a subscriber device via the statically created layer 2 interface, wherein the layer 2 interface comprises a bridged Ethernet interface created over an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) interface; after authenticating the user information received from the subscriber device, receiving from the subscriber device a plurality of packets on the statically configured layer 2 interface of the network device; sensing a protocol of each of the plurality of packets, wherein at least two of the packets correspond to at least two different protocols; and dynamically building a plurality of interface columns over the same statically created layer 2 interface to process the plurality of packets from the subscriber device, wherein the plurality of interface columns built over the statically created layer 2 interface include a respective column for each of the at least two different protocols sensed from the plurality of packets.