Patent ID: 7864785

Claim:
A method for creating a bundle of soft permanent virtual circuits (SPVCs) coupling from a source end to a destination end via a communication network, the method comprising: creating an SPVC bundle for the source end, the SPVC bundle comprising a plurality of member SPVCs, each member SPVC comprising a permanent virtual circuit (PVC) and a switched virtual circuit (SVC), each of the member SPVCs being associated with a respective connection characteristic and coupling to a same destination, wherein each of the connection characteristics includes a respective quality of service (QoS) parameter that is maintained as Internet Protocol (IP) packets propagate from the source end, over the communication network, and to the destination end; transmitting, from the source end to the destination end, an SPVC setup message containing configuration information of the SPVC bundle, the configuration information comprising bumping rules for individual member SPVCs, the bumping rules specifying to which member SPVC traffic should be bumped when a specific member SPVC fails; and associating each of the member SPVCs with a respective Internet Protocol (IP) precedence level, and wherein a first precedence level is used for an unspecified bit rate (UBR), a second precedence level is used for video data, and a third precedence level is used for voice data, the precedence levels being used in bumping rules for the IP packets such that the QoS parameter is maintained as the IP packets propagate from the source end to the destination end, wherein the transmitting includes signalling the SPVC setup message containing the SPVC bundle information using the Generic Application Transport information element (GAT IE).