Patent ID: 8416790

Claim:
A packet switch operating method comprising: a packet switch receiving an Ethernet packet from an Ethernet provider network; the packet switch creating a plurality of duplicates of the received Ethernet packet; the packet switch modifying the duplicates by adding a same service instance identifier and a different one of a plurality of packet tunnel identifiers to each of the duplicates so that the packet tunnel identifiers comprised by the modified duplicates are different relative to one another, each of the packet tunnel identifiers being associated with and defining a different one of a plurality of packet tunnels originating on the packet switch; and the packet switch forwarding the modified duplicates to the packet tunnels associated with the packet tunnel identifiers comprised by the modified duplicates; wherein each of the packet tunnel identifiers of the plurality comprises a different unicast Ethernet backbone destination address relative to one another and each of the packet tunnel identifiers of the plurality comprises a backbone tag; wherein each of the plurality of packet tunnels comprises a single tunnel having only two endpoints comprising the packet switch and another packet switch of a plurality of packet switches such that the packet switch is fully connected to each of the plurality of packet switches via the plurality of packet tunnels, and wherein each of the plurality of packet switches further connects to a plurality of Ethernet provider networks; and wherein the packet switch is configured to prevent forwarding of packets received from one packet tunnel defined by the plurality of packet tunnel identifiers between other packet tunnels defined by the plurality of packet tunnel identifiers to prevent broadcast storms without relying on spanning tree protocols.