Patent ID: 7693164

Claim:
A packet tunnel network creation method comprising: a first edge bridge (EB) receiving a request to create a plurality of packet tunnels fully connecting a plurality of EBs to each other, the plurality of EBs comprising the first EB and two or more additional EBs and the plurality of packet tunnels enabling layer-two Ethernet communication between three or more provider networks, each of the three or more provider networks individually being associated with a different one of the plurality of EBs relative to one another; in response to the receiving of the request, the first EB directing the additional EBs to establish the plurality of packet tunnels and a plurality of tunnel identifiers associated with the plurality of packet tunnels, the plurality of packet tunnels not existing prior to the receiving of the request; and wherein subsequent to the directing, the additional EBs modify Ethernet packets received from the provider networks by adding a first field comprising a same Instance Service Identifier (I-SID) and a second field comprising one of the tunnel identifiers to the received Ethernet packets, the additional EBs selecting the one tunnel identifier of the second field on a packet-by-packet basis based on a Customer Destination Address (C-DA) field of the received Ethernet packets.