A PBB tunnel may be linked to an Epipe to a B-VPLS. MAC switching and learning is not required for the point-to-point service. All packets ingressing the SAP are PBB encapsulated and forwarded to the PBB tunnel to the backbone destination MAC address. Likewise, all the packets ingressing the B-VPLS destined for the ISID are PBB de-encapsulated and forwarded to the Epipe SAP. A fully specified backbone destination address must be provisioned for each PBB Epipe instance to be used for each incoming frame on the related I-SAP. If the backbone destination address is not found in the B-VPLS FDB, packets may be flooded through the B-VPLSs.
All B-VPLS constructs may be used including B-VPLS resiliency and OAM. Not all generic Epipe commands are applicable when using a PBB tunnel.