Patent ID: 8064447

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a path computation element (PCE) configured to communicate with a path computation client (PCC) and compute a point-to-multipoint (P2MP) path across an autonomous system (AS) domain, wherein the PCE and the PCC communicate using a request message and a reply message, wherein the request message comprises an existing P2MP path and a plurality of destination addresses to be added as a plurality of new leaves to the existing P2MP path, wherein the reply message comprises a plurality of new branches to the leaves, wherein the PCE and PCC are further configured to communicate using a plurality of session establishment messages, wherein the session establishment messages from the PCE to the PCC comprise a plurality of capability flags, wherein one of the capability flags indicates that the PCE is configured to store a P2MP path for the PCC, wherein the session establishment message from the PCC to the PCE comprises a plurality of request flags, and wherein one of the request flags indicates that the PCC requests that the PCE store the P2MP path for the PCC.