Patent ID: 8638659

Claim:
A method performed by a network node in a multicast communication network, the multicast communication network including a multicast tree to provide connectivity from a common source node to one or more multicast recipient nodes, the multicast communication network further including a set of secondary paths to provide redundancy to the multicast tree such that multicast data traffic is to be re-routed to one or more of the secondary paths in case of a failure in the multicast tree, the method comprising the steps of: detecting by the network node a loss of connection at an incoming interface to an upstream neighbor of the network node; determining that the network node cannot re-route the multicast data traffic to allow the multicast data traffic to be received by the multicast recipient nodes; and sending a notification packet downstream toward the one or more multicast recipient nodes, wherein the notification packet causes one or more downstream nodes to switch multicast reception to one or more of the secondary paths to re-route the multicast data traffic.