Patent ID: 8752131

Claim:
A method comprising: identifying a plurality of maintenance points of a maintenance entity group, the plurality of maintenance points comprising a plurality of end points and one or more intermediate points; establishing a Media Access Control Security (MACSec) connectivity association set for the plurality of maintenance points of the maintenance entity group, wherein establishing the MACSec connectivity association set comprises establishing a secure channel between each end point and associated end points and intermediate points and establishing a secure channel between each intermediate point and associated end points; and performing the following for each frame of a plurality of frames: determining security data of the MACSec connectivity association set, the security data facilitating determination of whether the each frame is acceptable; placing the security data into the each frame; encoding one or more parameters in a security tag of the each frame, the one or more parameters selected from a group consisting of: a maintenance entity level encoded in a secure association number field of the security tag, a maintenance entity group identifier encoded in a secure channel identifier field of the security tag, and a maintenance end point identifier encoded in the secure channel identifier field of the security tag; and communicating the frame to a maintenance point, the maintenance point configured to determine whether the each frame is acceptable from the security data.