Patent ID: 8325733

Claim:
A layer 2 forwarder and manipulator (L2FM) located in a layer 2 network and serves a plurality of networks entities, the L2FM comprising: a flow identifier; one or more flow managers; and a forward-flow manager; wherein the flow identifier receives a plurality of frames, from a plurality of entities, identifies one or more flows and accordingly, associates a flow to a flow manager out of the one or more flow managers and forwards the flow frames to the associated flow manager; wherein per each new flow the flow manager, obtains forwarding control information for the new flow from a remote-admission-and-information controller (RAIC) and based on the obtained information, defines rules for forwarding the flow frames, and assigns the forwarding rules and the flow frames to the forward-flow manager, wherein the flow manager, based on the received frame of the flow, obtains the forwarding control information by selecting the RAIC from one or more different RAICs and the RAIC is an external entity to the network served by the L2FM; and wherein the forward-flow manager, handles the flow frames and forwards the flow frames to an appropriate port based on the forwarding rules.