Patent ID: 7054304

Claim:
A system for managing broadband IP services in a layer two broadcast network comprising: at least one intermediate system receiving traffic from outside and forwarding the traffic to at least one end system and also forwarding the response traffic from the at least one end system to the outside, wherein the at least one intermediate system forwards a service request packet to an available one of the at least one end system that the intermediate system learned about from service advertisements by the at least one end system; the one of the at least one end system advertising and providing service information on the layer two network, wherein if the one of the at least one end system determines to instruct another one of the at least one intermediate system to forward certain traffic from a certain source to another one of the at least one end system, the one of the at least one end system can advertise flow information to the another one of the at least one intermediate system, and wherein the service information is advertised by each of the at least one end system on the layer two network, the at least one intermediate system always forwards the packet based on the flow that is advertised by the one of the at least one end system, and each of the at least one end system can be added on the fly to share the load and gracefully shut down on the fly without interrupting other systems on the network and affecting service of the other systems; and at least one control system handling the registration from all the systems on this layer two network, responding to a request of any new system that looks for a server list for a particular service on this network, running as an Assigned Numbers Authority server for this layer two network, and running as a management agent that manages all the systems registered to the at least one control system.