Patent ID: 7990871

Claim:
A method, comprising: an egress router within a Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) domain receiving a plurality of different traffic flows, wherein each one of said traffic flow includes a plurality of frames each having a flow routing label and a destination address, wherein each one of said frames of a first one of said traffic flows and each one of said frames of a second one of said traffic flows have a common destination address; the egress router determining that the common destination address is unknown thereto; an egress router processing the flow routing label of each one of said frames, wherein said processing includes correlating a configuration of the flow routing label for each one of said frames to a respective one of said traffic flows; in response to said processing resulting in a determination that the flow routing label of a currently processed one of said frames corresponds to a first one of said traffic flows, the egress router causing the currently processed one of said frames to be dropped without flooding the currently processed one of said frames to all local access ports on an active Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) domain of the egress router; in response to said processing resulting in a determination that the flow routing label of a currently processed one of said frames corresponds to a second one of said traffic flows, the egress router causing the currently processed one of said frames to be flooded to all local access ports on the active VPLS domain of the egress router; the ingress router within the MPLS domain imposing the flow routing label on each one of said frame of the first one of said traffic flows prior to forwarding each one of said frames of the first one of said traffic flows toward the egress router; the ingress router maintaining a traffic flow data structure having information therein that associates a first source address with a type of flow routing required for frames designating the first source address, wherein said imposing includes determining that a frame received thereby designates the first source address and checking the traffic flow data structure to identify a type of flow routing that corresponds to the first source address; and the ingress router and the egress router each maintaining a respective label table; wherein each label table includes at least one set of Label Switch Path (LSP) information; wherein said LSP information includes a LSP designator, a flow routing label denoting normal flow routing functionality and a flow routing label denoting controlled flow routing functionality; wherein said normal flow routing functionality includes causing frames to be flooded to all local access ports on an active VPLS domain; and wherein said controlled flow routing functionality includes causing frames to be dropped without being flooded to all local access ports on an active VPLS domain.