Patent ID: 8274989

Claim:
A method of operating a resilient point-to-multipoint (P2MP) service in an Ethernet network, the method comprising the steps of: receiving at a root node a (P2MP) protocol data until (PDU) associated with the P2MP service; determining at the root node a mode of operation for the P2MP service; determining a forwarding path for the PDU based on the determined mode of operation, the forwarding path being associated with one of two or more trees from the root node to a plurality of common destination nodes forming the P2MP service, wherein each tree is identified by a unique VID/MAC tuple comprising a respective virtual LAN identifier (VID) associated with the tree, and a unique media-access-control (MAC) destination address (MAC DA) identifying the plurality of common destination nodes of the P2MP service, and forwarding the PDU through the network to the plurality of common destination nodes by the determined forwarding path using the unique VID/MAC tuple of the selected one of the trees; wherein the mode of operation is one of 1:1 resilience, 1:1 load sharing, 1+1 distribution, or m:n load sharing.