Patent ID: 8111633
Filing Date: 2012-02-07
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method comprising: establishing a multicast tree comprising a point-to-multipoint (P2MP) label switched path (LSP) forming a P2MP tunnel, the P2MP tunnel having a source device providing an ingress to the P2MP tunnel and a plurality of destination devices providing a plurality of different egresses from the P2MP tunnel, wherein each of the destination devices belongs to at least one of a plurality of virtual private local area network service (VPLS) multicast instances, and wherein establishing the multicast tree comprises allocating, with the source device, an inner label for each of the VPLS multicast instances; and transmitting multicast data packets for a plurality of different ones of the VPLS multicast instances from the source device through the P2MP tunnel to the destination devices on the multicast tree, wherein transmitting the multicast data packets from the source device comprises encapsulating each of the multicast data packets at the source device with an outer label and one of the inner labels, wherein the outer label identifies the multicast tree and the inner label is based on the VPLS multicast instance with which the multicast data packet is associated.