Patent ID: 7315554

Claim:
For use in an edge device of a transport network, a method for processing data, received from a first customer device via access facilities, addressed to a second customer device, the method comprising: a) terminating, with a physical interface, a link of the access facilities; b) associating at least one logical interface with the physical interface; c) associating customer context information with the logical interface; d) upon receiving the data, i) removing at least a part of layer 2 address information from the data to generate resulting data, and ii) adding the customer context information to the resulting data to generate modified data; e) aggregating the modified data at the logical interface with other modified data at other logical interfaces, for trunking on a shared, network-facing, communications link; f) receiving the modified data from the shared, network-facing, communications link; g) encapsulating the modified data with carrier information, used to forward the modified data across the transport network to a second edge device with which the second customer device has access, wherein the data includes a layer 3 destination address corresponding to a layer 3 address of the second customer device; h) at the second edge device, removing the carrier information to obtain the modified data; and i) advancing the data to a logical interface associated with the second customer device, wherein the logical interface associated with the second customer device is determined based on the layer 3 address of the second customer device and at least a part of the customer context information.