US 11,792,042 B1
Interworking between different layer two medias using network tunnels
Christian Schmutzer, Koenigsbrunn Im Weinviertel (AT); Onkar R. Deshpande, Bangalore (IN); and Patrick J. Cunningham, Pembroke, MA (US)
Assigned to Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US)
Filed by Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US)
Filed on Apr. 29, 2021, as Appl. No. 17/302,303.
Int. Cl. H04L 12/46 (2006.01); H04L 45/50 (2022.01); H04L 45/00 (2022.01)
CPC H04L 12/4633 (2013.01) [H04L 45/50 (2013.01); H04L 45/66 (2013.01); H04L 2212/00 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method, comprising:
receiving, at a virtual gateway network element (GNE) on a cross-media device and under control of a first entity, a packet from a first level two (L2) media type network for transmission to a second L2 media type network under control of a second entity, wherein the first L2 media type network and the second L2 media type network are incompatible for direct packet transmission;
removing, at the virtual GNE, Ethernet encapsulation from the packet by replacing the Ethernet encapsulation with a Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) tag and adding Connectionless-mode Network Protocol (CLNP) information to the packet;
re-encapsulating, at a first network device located between the virtual GNE and a packet network, the packet in a multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) encapsulation;
forwarding, over the packet network, the packet from the first network device to a digital communication channel (DCC) on a second network device, wherein the DCC is associated with the second L2 media type network, wherein the packet network is between the first network device and the second network device;
replacing, at the DCC on the second network device, the MPLS encapsulation with a Link Access Protocol (LAP) encapsulation; and
transmitting the packet encapsulated with the LAP encapsulation to the second L2 media type network.