Patent ID: 8199753

Claim:
A method of forwarding frames in a computer network using shortest path bridging (‘SPB’), the computer network including a plurality of bridge nodes, each edge bridge node assigned a unique service virtual local area network (‘VLAN’) identifier, at least one of the plurality of bridge nodes operating as an ingress bridge node through which the frames are received into the computer network, and at least one of the plurality of bridge nodes operating as an egress bridge node through which the frames are transmitted out of the computer network, the method comprising the steps of: receiving, by one of the plurality of bridge nodes, a frame for transmission to a destination node, the received frame entering the network through the ingress bridge node, the destination node connected to the network through the egress bridge node, the received frame including the unique service VLAN identifier for the ingress bridge node and a customer VLAN identifier, wherein the received frame comprises a vender header specified by a vender of the ingress bridge node, the vender header including the service VLAN identifier; identifying, by the one bridge node, an SPB forwarding tree based upon the service VLAN identifier, the SPB forwarding tree specifying a shortest route in the network from the ingress bridge node through the one bridge node to the other bridge nodes in the network; and forwarding, by the one bridge node to the egress bridge node without media access control (‘MAC’)-in-MAC encapsulation, the received frame based upon the SPB forwarding tree and the customer VLAN identifier.