Patent ID: 6894999

Claim:
A method of communicating between a phone line network which includes a plurality of devices coupled by a shared phone line medium, and a remote network, the method comprising: a) attaching, at a source node of a frame, a virtual local area network (VLAN) header to a data frame, wherein the VLAN header includes contents which indicate that the data frame may be transmitted within a VLAN indicated by an identifier field of the VLAN header, wherein the VLAN includes at least part of the phone line network and at least part of the remote network; and b) transmitting the data frame to the remote network and within the VLAN, wherein the transmitting includes transmitting the data frame along a network connection between the phone line network and the remote network, wherein the attaching the VLAN header is accomplished by a network medium interface device including a first physical layer device and a second physical layer device, wherein the first physical layer device is configured to communicate in accordance with a first Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HPNA) specification, and wherein the second physical layer device is configured to communicate in accordance with a second HPNA specification.