Patent ID: 8792510

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: an ingress node configured to couple to an egress node and to: cache a plurality of cached packets within the ingress node; encapsulate an identifier within each of the cached packets that indicates the cached packets have been cached by the ingress node; advertise a message that indicates an ability to cache the cached packets and retransmit the cached packets; transmit a plurality of non-cached packets to the egress node via a pseudowire (PW) when the ingress node does not receive a response to the message from the egress node; transmit the cached packets to an egress node via the PW when the ingress node receives the response to the message from the egress node; and retransmit one of the cached packets that has been cached based on a request received from the egress node, wherein the request indicates that the one of the cached packets has not been received by the egress node.