Patent ID: 8259593

Claim:
An apparatus comprising a first gateway, the first gateway comprising: at least two ports configured to receive traffic from at least a first island and a second island of a network, the received traffic comprising (i) unicast traffic from one or more nodes in the first island, and (ii) at least one of broadcast traffic and multicast traffic comprising diagnostic messages, wherein the diagnostic messages comprise one or more maintenance messages from the one or more nodes in the first island; and a controller configured to: determine whether the unicast traffic is destined for the second island; if the unicast traffic is destined for the second island, replace a medium access control (MAC) address in the unicast traffic with a MAC address of a second gateway and forward the unicast traffic to the second gateway for delivery to one or more nodes in the second island, each of the one or more nodes in the second island having an address containing a device index of the second gateway; if the unicast traffic is not destined for another island, replace the MAC address in the unicast traffic with a MAC address of a destination and forward the unicast traffic to the destination; block a portion of the broadcast and multicast diagnostic messages from being forwarded to the second island; and forward the one or more maintenance messages to the second island, wherein the one or more maintenance messages are configured to provide island-specific address information related to a location of any faults within the first island.