Patent ID: 7839862

Claim:
A method comprising: establishing a point-to-multipoint (P2MP) tunnel across a network between an upstream router and two or more downstream routers using the Label Distribution Protocol (LDP) for carrying multicast traffic from the upstream router to the two or more downstream routers, where each of the two or more downstream routers are neighbors to the upstream router, and further wherein the upstream router is positioned between the two or more downstream routers and a source of multicast traffic; receiving, with the upstream router, LDP Initialization messages that include upstream label assignment capability indications from one or more of the two or more downstream routers of the tunnel, wherein the upstream label assignment capability indications comprise a LDP Capability Type-Length-Value (TLV) with an Upstream Label Assignment Capability sub-TLV that indicates that the one or more downstream routers are capable of supporting labels for the tunnel that are assigned by the upstream router; and allocating an upstream assigned label from the upstream router to the one or more downstream routers of the tunnel from which the upstream label assignment capability indications were received.