Patent ID: 8339973

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, at a first network device that is associated with a multicast virtual private network (MVPN), a multicast traceroute message that identifies a source device that is associated with the MVPN and that is separated from the first network device by a multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) network; determining a label switched path (LSP) from the first network device to a second network device that is associated with the MVPN and that is separated from the first network device by the MPLS network; adding an Internet Protocol (IP) header to the multicast traceroute message, the IP header comprising a destination address set to a localhost loopback IP address that causes the multicast traceroute message to be processed in a control plane of the second network device; encapsulating the multicast traceroute message with an MPLS label stack comprising an inner MPLS label and an outer MPLS label, the MPLS label stack causing the encapsulated multicast traceroute message to reach an instance of the MVPN on the second network device; and transmitting the encapsulated multicast traceroute message from the first network device to the second network device via the LSP.