Patent ID: 8144699

Claim:
A method for provisioning a home access gateway, the method comprising: receiving an indication via a provisioning message transmitted via an Ethernet port that a home access gateway bridge between an Ethernet network furnishing services and customer premises equipment (CPE) connecting to the services has been connected to a port of an Ethernet access network providing multiple different services, selected from a group of services consisting of video, telephony, and data services, each service provided via a different Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) via Ethernet protocol; responsively to the indication, transmitting via the Ethernet port at least one provisioning message indicating associations between the services and respective Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) identifiers, wherein the at least one provisioning message indicates a different VLAN identifier to be respectively associated with each of the services; after transmitting the at least one provisioning message, conveying from the network to the port Ethernet frames containing data provided by one or more of the services, each frame comprising a VLAN identifier in accordance with the indicated associations; and configuring the home access gateway bridge to deliver the services to the customer premises equipment; wherein receiving the indication comprises receiving an upstream Ethernet frame transmitted via the port by a customer premises gateway, and wherein transmitting the at least one provisioning message comprises transmitting a downstream Ethernet frame to the customer premises gateway.