Patent ID: 8004960

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a processor; and a network interface communicatively coupled to the processor and configured to communicate one or more packet flows in a network, wherein the processor is configured to forward label distribution protocol multicast traffic along a multicast tree having a primary and a backup path in a converged network topology, utilize the backup path, in response to a topology change, send a changed topology label and path vector to at least one neighbor node in the changed topology to establish a new multicast tree that uses at least one new label that is not utilized in the multicast tree, where the new multicast tree is disjoint from the multicast tree, forward traffic, using both the new multicast tree, that uses the at least one new label, and the multicast tree, during a timeout period after the topology change, and forward traffic after expiration of the timeout period using only the new multicast tree, that uses the at least one new label, and is disjoint from the multicast tree.