Separate ethernet forwarding and control plane systems and methods with interior gateway route reflector for a link state routing system

Abstract

The present disclosure provides a separate Ethernet forwarding and control plane system, method, network, and architecture with a Link State Interior Gateway route reflector for the control plan system and a layer two network architecture for the forwarding system. The present invention optionally utilizes a cloud implementation for the Designated Router (DR) or designated peering node reducing peering requirements and distributing the functionality. Through the architecture of the present invention, the Provider router is obviated by the application of layer two switches and servers. Such an architecture provides improved scaling, performance, and cost reduction.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.