Patent ID: 8385341

Claim:
A method to facilitate the broadcast of frames between a set of Edge Nodes of a transport network, wherein nodes of the transport network forward frames using labels added to the frames at ingress Edge Nodes, the method comprising the steps of: designating one of said Edge Nodes to manage a forwarding construct for the broadcast tree within the transport network using control plane RSBP-TE signalling acting as a master control node; signalling from the designated Edge Node to each of said other Edge Nodes, and to intermediate nodes in the paths between said Edge Nodes, to install an entry or entries into a forwarding table of the Edge and intermediate nodes mapping frame labels to output forwarding ports such that said entries together form a single forwarding construct for the broadcast tree such that frames labeled by any of the Edge Nodes of said set are transmitted to all other Edge Nodes of the same set; upon receipt of a frame at one of said Edge Nodes or intermediate nodes, using the provided forwarding table to map the frame label of the frame to one or more forwarding ports; and, sending the frame via the identified forwarding port(s).