Patent ID: 7366181

Claim:
A Virtual Private Network (VPN), comprising: a Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) network; a plurality of Virtual Local Access Networks (VLANs) each coupled to an edge router of the shared label switching network, the VLANs each communicating traffic with a corresponding edge router utilizing channelized Ethernet over SONET (EoS); and the edge routers interfacing the VLANs with the MPLS network, the edge routers comprising: a transmit-side edge router operable to convert an ingress VLAN packet received from a VLAN and associated with a VPN to an MPLS packet and to send the MPLS packet to the MPLS network, wherein converting an ingress VLAN packet to an MPLS packet comprises identifying a VPN label that corresponds to a VLAN identifier (VIP) of the ingress VLAN packet and generating an MPLS packet having the VPN label; and a receive-side edge router operable to convert an MPLS packet received from the MPLS network to an egress VLAN packet and sending the egress VLAN packet to a VLAN associated with the VPN, wherein converting the received MPLS packet to an egress VLAN packet comprises identifying a VID that corresponds to a VPN label contained in the received MPLS packet and generating a VLAN packet having the VID.