Patent ID: 7796506

Claim:
A method for load balancing of an Ethernet network, the method comprising: configuring each bridge of a portion of the Ethernet network to provide for load-balanced distribution of network traffic over the Ethernet network portion, the Ethernet network portion comprising a plurality of bridges and links connecting the plurality of bridges, wherein each bridge of the Ethernet network portion comprises: one or more ingress logical ports; a plurality of regular ports, each regular port comprising a physical and logical port, and at least one link aggregation logical port comprising a plurality of physical ports wherein each of the regular ports on each bridge is connected to one of the plurality of physical ports of one of the at least one link aggregation logical ports of a different bridge; and wherein the step of configuring each bridge further comprises: associating a plurality of different VLANs with the bridge, configuring each logical port of the bridge with a Port VLAN ID (PVID), wherein the PVID defines a VLAN ID (VID) for classifying untagged frames and zero tagged frames arriving at the logical port and assigning each logical port of the bridge to a VLAN member set identifying one or more of the plurality VLANs such that at least two logical ports of the bridge are assigned different VLAN member sets; and wherein the step of configuring each logical port of the bridge with a Port VLAN ID (PVID) comprises creating distinct VLANs comprising separate groupings with the one or more ingress logical ports being common to each grouping and said groupings prevent traffic received at the one or more ingress logical ports and the at least one link aggregation logical port of a bridge from being forwarded to the plurality of regular ports and prevent traffic received at the plurality of regular ports from being forwarded to the at least one link aggregation logical port.