Patent ID: 7519056

Claim:
A method for managing virtual local area network (VLAN) traffic in a network node comprising: establishing a logical port within a network node that includes a binding to a tunnel; associating said logical port with a VLAN; receiving traffic at said network node that is associated with said VLAN; forwarding said traffic out of said network node using said logical port; wherein establishing said logical port includes binding said logical port to a dynamic multi-protocol label switched (MPLS) tunnel and a destination IP address and wherein the dynamic MPLS tunnel is an MPLS tunnel that does not specify a particular label switch path (LSP) that is to be used to reach a target destination and wherein the LSP that corresponds to the MPLS tunnel is dynamically determined by a label distribution protocol (LDP); and wherein said logical port includes a binding to a virtual circuit (VC) identifier (ID) that is to be used for a VC label in a layer 2 MPLS label stack.