Patent ID: 7701955

Claim:
A cable landing station for an undersea cable shared by a plurality of carriers, the cable landing station comprising: a first interface adapted for coupling to a first undersea cable portion; at least a second interface adapted for coupling to at least a second undersea cable portion; and a router including a plurality of ports and having a plurality of packet addresses, with each carrier of the plurality of carriers being assigned at least one exclusive port of the plurality of ports, with the router being coupled to the first interface and the at least second interface and with the router being logically partitioned between the carriers by associating each carrier of the plurality of carriers with a separate packet address of the plurality of packet addresses, and with the router being configured to route packets between the first interface, the second interface, and the plurality of ports according to the logical partitioning between the carriers, with the router being configured to transfer the packets using tunneling by inserting the packets into a plurality of tunnels that exist between the router and another router at another cable landing station, wherein each tunnel of the plurality of tunnels is associated exclusively with a different one of the plurality of carriers.