Patent ID: 7920561

Claim:
An Ethernet Media Access Control (MAC) Bridge device configured to establish Ethernet MAC circuit functionality for Ethernet networks, comprising: a MAC Bridge configured to support learning based on source MAC addresses to ingress port mapping stored by a higher layer routing application, a signaling application, or both, in a mapping database by request to establish an Ethernet MAC circuit; the MAC Bridge further configured to manage an Address Table (AT) having a plurality of AT entries to set up and manage the Ethernet MAC circuit, the plurality of AT entries having at least a destination MAC address field, a source MAC address field, and a port to forward frame to field; wherein the destination MAC address field and/or the source MAC address field is utilized to lookup an Ethernet frame destination MAC address and/or an Ethernet frame source MAC address and forward the Ethernet frame to a port in one of the plurality of AT entries to establish the Ethernet MAC circuit.