Patent ID: 7733790

Claim:
A line card for a digital subscriber line access multiplexer DSLAM) connected to a service provider network, the line card comprising: a plurality of physical ports, each physical port supporting a connection to a digital subscriber line (DSL) provisioned for subscriber services; and a virtual port that appears to an administrator workstation located in the service provider network as a test port on the line card, the virtual port being configured to permit a test host to link through the service provider network via a virtual port tunneling function to a physical port on the line card to permit Layer 2 and above testing of the subscriber services to the line card; a virtual port cross-connect function that forwards all traffic addressed to the physical port from an interworking feature processing block to the virtual port, and forwards all traffic from the virtual port to the interworking feature processing block; and a virtual port tunneling function that provides an exact customer traffic flow to the test host by encapsulating all traffic sent from the virtual port to the test host and de-encapsulates all traffic sent from the test host to the virtual port ensuring that the exact customer traffic flow is evaluated at the test host.