Patent ID: 8213429

Claim:
A system comprising: a physical machine configured to be communicatively coupled to a forwarding network, the physical machine including a network interface comprising: a data packet receiver configured to receive data packets to be sent across a virtual network coupled to the network interface, the virtual network having a number of remote interfaces coupled by a multipoint tunnel through the forwarding network, each remote interface having a forwarding address in an address space of the forwarding network, the data packets each having a destination address in an address space of the virtual network; an address mapper arranged to determine which of the forwarding addresses to use for each data packet, according to the destination address of each data packet, the forwarding addresses being reconfigurable; and an encapsulator arranged to encapsulate each data packet with a forwarding address and a virtual network ID so that the forwarding network can forward each data packet transparent to the destination address of each data packet, to implement the multipoint tunnel.