Patent ID: 7869450

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprising: receiving, at a layer 2 switch, a first carrier-tagged traffic flow from a service edge via a first label switched path, wherein the first carrier-tagged traffic flow has a first carrier tag; identifying, at the layer 2 switch, a second label switched path based on a flow identifier included with the first carrier tag of the first carrier-tagged traffic flow, where the flow identifier comprises a pseudo-wire tag or a virtual local area network (VLAN) tag; removing the flow identifier, by the layer 2 switch, from the first carrier tag of the first carrier-tagged traffic flow; and switching the first carrier-tagged traffic flow after assigning a new carrier tag without the flow identifier to a first building aggregation system, for aggregating a plurality of different services, from the layer 2 switch via the second label switched path, wherein the first label switched path and the second label switched path are multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) label switched paths.