Abstract: A S-VPN gateway provides a signaling gateway to integrate SIP signaling and UNI/NNI signaling, and manage the mapping between SIP sessions and VPN connections. The mapping relationship reflects the access of user applications to the specific VPN tunnels, multiplexing of media service sessions to VPN tunnels, VPN service creation, service duration, VPN QoS, VPN service life cycle management, and VPN service charge based on a per-service-usage. The S-VPN gateway also provides VPN access policy/security management (i.e., inter-domain AAA process), VPN membership auto-discovery, service auto-discovery, network resource auto-discovery, address resolution service for both SIP and VPN naming space, VPN service mobility, and SLA management. The S-VPN gateway enables network VPN tunnels to be created in advanced and accessed on-demand, for example by enterprise VPN applications such as GRID applications, through a SIP interface.

Abstract: A S-VPN gateway provides a signaling gateway to integrate SIP signaling and UNI/NNI signaling, and manage the mapping between SIP sessions and VPN connections. The mapping relationship reflects the access of user applications to the specific VPN tunnels, multiplexing of media service sessions to VPN tunnels, VPN service creation, service duration, VPN QoS, VPN service life cycle management, and VPN service charge based on a per-service-usage. The S-VPN gateway also provides VPN access policy/security management (i.e., inter-domain AAA process), VPN membership auto-discovery, service auto-discovery, network resource auto-discovery, address resolution service for both SIP and VPN naming space, VPN service mobility, and SLA management. The S-VPN gateway enables network VPN tunnels to be created in advanced and accessed on-demand, for example by enterprise VPN applications such as GRID applications, through a SIP interface.

Abstract: A network element employing a universal mapper enables multiple services to be mapped onto a physical medium (metallic link with a particular physical layer protocol) so that the number of service mappers, and hence the complexity of the network element, may be reduced, the cost of provisioning the device may be reduced, and new services may be deployed, such as Ethernet over T1. The universal mapper may be configured to generate frames for transmission over multiple physical mediums utilizing a protocol known as Generic Framing Procedure (GFP). Using this embodiment, services such as ATM, Frame Relay, Ethernet, IP/PPP, Voice, and Infiniband may be transported in GFP frames over metallic links operating using xDSL, T1/E1, T3/E3, or cable access technologies by utilizing a single GFP framer and a single set of service mappers.