Inventors:
Vahe Mirzabegian - Harvard MA, US
Pawel Sowinski - Boylston MA, US
Ajit Nayak - Westborough MA, US
Stuart Green - Salem NH, US
International Classification:
H04L012/66
Abstract:
Users are enabled to network multiple customer premises equipment (CPE) devices together to form a virtual local area network (VLAN) among CPE devices that access the Internet through different cable modems. In a preferred embodiment, each VLAN is associated with a unique security association identifier (SAID), which enables a cable modem termination system (CMTS) to implement a secondary level of security in its routing procedures. As a result, data packets addressed to one or more members of a VLAN can be encrypted using the corresponding SAID such that access to the data packets is restricted only to members of the appropriate VLAN.