the services on the faulty tree are switched to the other tree using split horizon bridging each steiner tree can also be realized using poin to multipoint lsps which is fully protected by a precomputed point to mulltipoint lsp application_number US 21266105 A description fig1 shows an abstract of a digital multimedia broadcast system built upon a vpls network where h 1 and h 2 are special pe 39 s connected to the head end and its backup and pe 1 pen are the pe 39 s connected to the aggregation nodes ce 39 s at the receiver site in the traditional vpls architecture the connectivity between h 1 h 2 and pe 1 pen is achieved by a mesh of pseudo wires in the earlier application ser no 11 060 465 however the inventors disclose a tree structure to carry traffic from the head end pe 39 s to the receiver pe 39 s the tree could be a shortest path tree or a minimum cost tree also called steiner tree which will be described herein in greater detail since the connectivity between pe 39 s is achieved by the tree structure we call the architecture of fig1 the tree based vpls or tvpls in short the present invention.