Patent ID: 7907549

Claim:
A method comprising: creating a ring object modeling a ring network of a network system, the network system comprising a plurality of network elements, each network element comprising a gateway, the ring network configured to communicate a plurality of packets, each network element comprising a plurality of components, the ring object comprising a plurality of provisioning properties, a provisioning property describing configuring a component to become a member of the ring network; associating the component with the ring object to allow the component to become a member of the ring network, the associated component allowed to receive the plurality of packets, the component associated with the ring object by: deleting from connection data one or more data entries that correspond to one or more bypass connections that bypass the component; and adding to the connection data one or more data entries that correspond to one or more pass-through connections that pass through the component to allow the component to receive the plurality of packets; and storing the ring object at memory of each network element.