Patent ID: 7933267

Claim:
A method comprising: using a label switching protocol to establish a multicast tree having a source device providing an ingress to the multicast tree and one or more destination devices providing egresses from the multicast tree within a network, wherein the source device and each of the one or more destination devices belongs to at least one multicast virtual private network (MVPN), wherein using a label switching protocol to establish a multicast tree includes: discovering, with the source device, the remote MVPNs of which the source device is not a member and the one or more destination devices are members; mapping a plurality of the discovered remote MVPNs to the multicast tree; advertising mapping information to the one or more destination devices, wherein the mapping information specifies the plurality of the discovered remote MVPNs that are mapped to the multicast tree by the source device; and transmitting, with the source device, multicast data packets on the multicast tree for a local one of the MVPNs of which the source device is a member and a remote one of the MVPNs of which the source device is not a member.