Patent ID: 7860112

Claim:
A method comprising: establishing an Ethernet-based service domain over a network to transport layer two (L2) communications between an upstream gateway network device of the Ethernet-based service domain and one or more downstream network devices of the Ethernet-based service domain; receiving configuration information configuring a first set of interfaces of a network device as downstream interfaces for receiving packets from downstream network devices; receiving configuration information configuring a second set of interfaces of the network device as upstream interfaces for receiving packets from upstream network devices; forwarding packets received with the network device from the upstream gateway network device on the upstream interfaces to the one or more downstream network devices of the Ethernet-based service domain in a point-to-multipoint (P2MP) manner by using Media Access Control (MAC) addresses of the packets to determine the one or more downstream network devices to which to forward the packets; and forwarding all packets received with the network device from one of the downstream network devices on one of the downstream interfaces to the upstream gateway network device in a point-to-point (P2P) manner by outputting each of the packets on a P2P connection selected based on a Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) identifier contained in the received packets without considering a MAC address of the packets, wherein the network device and the upstream gateway network device are endpoints of the P2P connection.