Patent ID: 8583753

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, by a receiving node, a first service advertisement message in an Ethernet frame sent from an advertising node via a ring-based network, the first service advertisement message including a Media Access Control (MAC) address of the advertising node and a first service identifier (ID) for one or more services, the advertising node being coupled to a switch outside the ring-based network, wherein the one or more services include one or more virtual local area network (VLAN) memberships supported by one or more ports on the switch; determining, by the receiving node based on the first service advertisement message, a service map indicating an association between the MAC address of the advertising node and the first service ID for the one or more services; transmitting, by the receiving node, data for at least one of the services to the switch via the advertising node based on the service map via the ring-based network; receiving, by the receiving node from a standby node, a second service advertisement message, the second service advertisement message including a MAC address of the standby node and the first service ID, the standby node being coupled to the switch, wherein receiving comprises periodically receiving the first and second service advertisement messages that include a service domain ID that is configured to identify a partition in the ring-based network such that VLAN membership IDs can be reused among service domains; and updating, by the receiving node based on the second service advertisement message, the service map by adding the MAC address of the standby node to indicate the standby node is associated with the first service ID.