Patent ID: 8102848

Claim:
A method for operating a first router, the method comprising: in response to a condition forcing a restart of an IP multicast speaker role for the first router, indicating the restart condition to a first multicast neighbor router by advertising a first IP multicast speaker generation identifier to the first multicast neighbor router prior to the restart, and advertising a second IP multicast speaker generation identifier to the first multicast neighbor router subsequent to the restart; receiving IP multicast tree information from the first multicast neighbor router; building internal router path IP multicast forwarding information from the received IP multicast tree information; receiving an end-of-tree marker from the first multicast neighbor router indicating that the neighbor router has completed transmission of the IP multicast tree information to the first router; and in response to receiving the end-of-tree marker, activating the internal router path IP multicast forwarding information for data path forwarding within the first router.