Abstract: A technique transfers data between geographically dispersed entities belonging to a virtual-local-area network (VLAN). According to the technique, geographically dispersed entities communicate via software-defined virtual ports that “appear” as physical ports to the entities. Each virtual port, in turn, is associated with one or more connections wherein each connection may be associated with one or more VLANs. Data generated on a particular VLAN that is destined for a remote entity is forwarded to a virtual port which, in turn, transfers the data to the remote entity over the connection associated with the VLAN. Moreover, state is maintained at each virtual port for each connection, thereby enabling the virtual ports to support various protocols that operate with physical ports.

Abstract: In communication systems which include high speed wired local area networks (LANs) and low speed wireless LANs, the bandwidth of the wireless LANs can be severely impacted. It has been found that many broadcast or multicast messages which are forwarded to the wireless LANs are not required as the mobile terminals which would receive the messages are not required to act on them. The present invention provides a means and method to filter out unneeded messages so that they do not impact the bandwidth of the wireless network. Each access point for each wireless LAN maintains a table of parameters for each associated mobile terminal in the connected wireless LAN. The parameters in that table are compared to the parameters in message frames received by the access point and only those messages having parameters found in the table are put on the wireless LAN. The level of filtering can be controlled by specifying which parameters are to be used for filtering messages.