Patent ID: 8015320

Claim:
A network comprising: a plurality of trees each comprising at least one ingress leaf node, a plurality of interior nodes, and at least one egress leaf node, wherein the interior nodes of each tree are completely disjoint from each other, wherein at least some of the ingress leaf nodes and the egress leaf nodes are common to the trees, wherein the ingress leaf node is configured to transport data to the egress leaf node using any of the trees, wherein a leaf node sends a plurality of data packets associated with a Source Address (SA) on a selected tree but not on an unselected tree, wherein the leaf node periodically sends an Ethernet packet that lacks a data payload on the unselected tree, thereby causing the unselected tree to maintain a Filtering Database (FDB) entry corresponding to the SA, wherein the unselected tree does not receive any data packets associated with the FDB entries before receiving the non-data packet, and wherein at least some of the nodes are Ethernet bridges.