Patent ID: 7602702

Claim:
A method comprising: establishing, with a plurality of routing devices of a network, a point to multi-point (P2MP) label switched path (LSP) tunnel having a source and multiple destinations, wherein the P2MP LSP tunnel has a plurality of branch LSPs merged to form the P2MP LSP tunnel; establishing the P2MP LSP tunnel to include a bypass tunnel associated with at least one of the branch LSPs; receiving multicast traffic at the source of the P2MP LSP tunnel; forwarding copies of the multicast traffic from the source to each of the destinations via the P2MP LSP tunnel; forwarding at least a portion of the multicast traffic through the bypass tunnel; detecting a network event associated with at least one of the branch LSPs; and in response to the detected network event, rerouting the multicast traffic to flow through the bypass tunnel of the P2MP LSP, wherein rerouting the multicast traffic comprises: outputting one or more messages from an ingress node associated with the bypass tunnel to a merge point where the bypass tunnel merges with the at least one of the branch LSPs of the P2MP LSP, wherein the messages include an identifier for the P2MP LSP tunnel and an identifier for the branch LSP for which the network event is detected; receiving the messages at the merge point; determining the branch LSP for which the network event was detected based on the identifier for the P2MP LSP tunnel and the identifier for the LSP branch; and forwarding traffic to the multiple destinations based on the determination.