Patent ID: 7983286

Claim:
For use by an egress edge device of a transport network supporting a transparent LAN segment service, a method for populating a forwarding table associated with a transparent LAN segment based on data received, the data received including a label and a layer 2 source address, the method comprising: a) determining, using the egress edge device, an edge device of the transport network on which the data entered the transport network based on the label of the data received; b) determining, using the egress edge device, a port of the determined edge device on which the data entered the determined edge device based on the label of the data received; and c) generating, using the egress edge device, an entry in the forwarding table, the entry including i) a layer 2 address set to the layer 2 source address of the data, ii) an egress edge device identifier based on the determined edge device, and iii) a label associated with the determined port, wherein the label information includes a label base, and a label range, wherein the label of the data received is greater than or equal to the label base, but is less than the sum of the label base and the label range, and wherein the port is determined based on the label of the data received and the label base.