Patent ID: 8599849

Claim:
A method comprising: building a point-to-multipoint label switched path (LSP) in a multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) network by using Resource Reservation Protocol Traffic Engineering (RSVP-TE) to signal the point-to-multipoint LSP as a plurality of separate point-to-point LSPs between a source edge router attached to a source and a plurality of receiver edge routers associated with a plurality of receivers participating in a session and to merge the plurality of separate point-to-point LSPs into the point-to-multipoint LSP, wherein the signaling of the point-to-multipoint LSP as a plurality of separate point-to-point LSPs includes exchanging signaling messages between nodes identified in the plurality of separate point-to-point LSPs, the signaling messages each including an identifier of the point-to-multipoint LSP that includes a session object that contains a tunnel identifier and a point-to-multipoint identifier.