Patent ID: 7522600

Claim:
A method comprising: using a first tunneling protocol, establishing a multicast tree having a source device providing an ingress to the multicast tree and a plurality of destination devices providing a plurality of different egresses from the multicast tree within a network, wherein each of the destination devices belongs to at least one multicast virtual private network (MVPN); and using a second tunneling protocol different from the first tunneling protocol, establishing tunnels between the source device and the one or more destination devices; separately transporting control information and multicast data packets for the MVPNs between the source device and the one or more destination devices, wherein separately transporting the control information and the multicast data packets comprises: transporting the multicast data packets from the source device to the destination devices on the multicast tree in accordance with the first tunneling protocol, and transporting the control information between the source device and the destination devices using the tunnels in accordance with the second tunneling protocol.