Patent ID: 8170026

Claim:
A network element comprising: a control card having a virtual circuit data structure and a next hop data structure, wherein the virtual circuit data structure includes a virtual circuit element that represents a layer 2 virtual circuit and indicates a layer 2 protocol specific logical circuit associated with the layer 2 virtual circuit and the virtual circuit element references a first next hop element of the next hop data structure, wherein the first next hop element indicates a layer 3 next hop, and wherein the control card is configured to distribute the virtual circuit element and the first next hop element to a line card that is coupled with the control card; and the line card having a forwarding information base (FIB) and a virtual circuit table, wherein the line card is configured to create in the virtual circuit table a virtual circuit table element based on the distributed virtual circuit element, wherein the line card is configured to create in the FIB a second next hop element based on the first next hop element indicates the layer 3 next hop, and wherein the virtual circuit table element references the layer 3 next hop in the second next hop element that is associated with a represented layer 2 virtual circuit indicated by the virtual circuit table element.