Method and system for VMAN protocol
AssigneeExtreme Networks, Inc.
InventorsMichael Yip, Steve Haddock
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method and system is provided in which MAN traffic is segregated at a customer and a provider domain level. A switch at the edge of the MAN encapsulates a data packet in a new header, which is used to specify the customer domain tags. The data packet is encapsulated further in another new header, which is used to specify new VMAN tags. The nested encapsulation is repeated as necessary until the data packet is forwarded to a remote switch at the edge of the MAN in accordance with the VMAN configuration or the source and destination address in the original data packet. The remote switch strips the VMAN tags from the data packet, and forwards the stripped data packet to the receiving customer domain as specified in the customer domain tag.
Claims33
A system comprising:
- a metropolitan area network (MAN) to service a plurality of customers, wherein the MAN comprises a plurality of virtual metropolitan area networks (VMANs);
- and
- a plurality of switches to segregate data packets received from one of the plurality of customers from data packets received from another of the plurality of customers, the plurality of switches including:
- a first switch at an edge of the MAN to encapsulate each received data packet with a new header that contains a customer VMAN identifier (ID) that identifies the VMAN associated with the customer from which the data packet originated;
- and
- a second switch at another edge of the MAN to remove the VMAN encapsulation from each data packet before forwarding the data packet to another one of the plurality of customer domains with the same customer VMAN ID.
A method comprising:
- receiving a data packet from one of a plurality of customer domains at a first switch located at an edge of a metropolitan area network (MAN), the MAN comprising a plurality of virtual metropolitan area networks (VMANs);
- encapsulating the data packet at the first switch with a new header that includes a VMAN type and a VMAN identifier (ID), the VMAN ID identifying the VMAN associated with the customer domain from which the data packet originated;
- forwarding the encapsulated data packet to a second switch located at another edge of the MAN according to the VMAN ID;
- removing the VMAN encapsulation from the data packet at the second switch;
- and
- forwarding the data packet from the second switch to another one of the plurality of customer domains with the same VMAN ID.
An article of manufacture comprising a machine-accessible medium including content that when accessed by a machine causes the machine to:
- receive a data packet from one of a plurality of customer domains at a first switch located at an edge of a metropolitan area network (MAN), the MAN comprising a plurality of virtual metropolitan area networks (VMANs);
- encapsulate the data packet at the first switch with a new header that includes a VMAN type and a VMAN identifier (ID), the VMAN ID identifying the VMAN associated with the customer domain from which the data packet originated;
- forward the encapsulated data packet to a second switch located at another edge of the MAN according to the VMAN ID;
- remove the VMAN encapsulation from the data packet at the second switch;
- and
- forward the data packet from the second switch to another one of the plurality of customer domains with the same VMAN.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.