Patent ID: 7519010

Claim:
A method comprising: establishing a first multicast tree having a source device and one or more destination devices within a first autonomous system (AS), wherein each of the one or more destination devices belongs to at least one multicast virtual private network (MVPN); establishing a second multicast tree having a source device and one or more destination devices within a second AS, wherein each of the one or more destination devices belongs to at least one MVPN; and stitching the first and second multicast trees together to create an inter-AS multicast tree for transmitting multicast data packets for the MVPNs from the source devices to the destination devices in the first AS and the second AS; receiving with the source device, the multicast data packets from a multicast source; encapsulating the multicast data packets for the MVPNs that have destination devices in the first AS and the second AS requesting the multicast data packets; and transmitting the encapsulated packet for the MVPNs on the inter-AS multicast tree.