Patent ID: 7643488

Claim:
A method of supporting multiple customer provisioned Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) in a scalable manner, the method comprising the steps of: instantiating, by a Customer Edge (CE) network element, a Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) process for each of the customer provisioned VPNs to be supported by the CE network element; establishing, by the CE network element, a separate Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) secure data channel for each VPN to be supported, by obtaining a shared group security association for each VPN from a Group Controller Key Server (GCKS); and instantiating, by the CE network element, a Network Routing Engine (NRE) process configured to interact with the VRF processes, the NRE process maintaining an interface table containing a mapping between VRF name and interface ID for each of the secure control channels, secure data channels, and local interfaces.