Patent ID: 8532119

Claim:
A switching device comprising: a first ingress module configured to be connected to a first network and further configured to: receive a first packet from a first device in the first network, change a destination address of the received first packet from a first phantom address corresponding to a second device in the first network, the phantom address being valid only in the first network, to an identifier of the second device valid only in a second network, wherein the second device is located in the second network and wherein the second network is coupled to the first network by a backbone network, and encapsulate the received first packet within an encapsulation packet such that the payload of the encapsulation packet comprises the received first packet, wherein the encapsulation packet is of the same protocol as the received first packet; a first egress module configured to be connected to the backbone network and further configured to: receive the encapsulation packet from the ingress module, and pass the encapsulation packet to the backbone network; a second ingress module configured to be connected to the backbone network and further configured to: receive from the backbone network a second encapsulation packet having as a payload a second packet, wherein the second encapsulation packet is of the same protocol as the second packet, recover the second packet from the encapsulation packet, and change a source identifier of the recovered second packet from an identifier of the second device in the second network, wherein the identifier of the second device in the second network is valid only in the second network to a phantom address in the first network of the second device, wherein the phantom address is valid only in the first network; and a second egress module configured to be connected to the first network and configured to receive the recovered second packet from the ingress module and pass the recovered second packet to the first device.