Patent ID: 8761034

Claim:
A method of demultiplexing Provider Backbone Bridging Traffic Engineering (PBB_TE) service instances, the method comprising the steps of: monitoring service instances between a first bridge port and a second bridge port by exchanging frames over each service instance; receiving frames by the second bridge port from the first bridge port; and demultiplexing received frames based on a Backbone Source MAC Address (B-SA), a Backbone Destination MAC Address (B-DA), and a Backbone VLAN identifier (B-VID) associated with each of the demultiplexed frames by: selecting a service association point (SAP) to process a received frame based on the respective B-SA, B-DA, and B-VID associated with that frame; and forwarding at least a portion of the frame to the selected SAP for further processing by the selected SAP.