A system and methods for automating membership discovery in a distributed computer network is presented. A first virtual circuit label switch path (LSP) associated with a first VPLS is established between a first multi tenant unit (MTU) and an attached provider edge (PE) device. A first label mapping message (LMM) is communicated over the first virtual circuit LSP and received at the PE device. The PE device broadcasts the LMM to a plurality of additional PE devices. In addition, methods for automating membership discovery for adding and deleting virtual private LAN service (VPLS) sites are presented. A virtual circuit forwarding equivalence class (VC-FEC) type packet utilized in the various methods and system is also disclosed.