Patent ID: 8005017

Claim:
A method for establishing a multicast Label Switched Path (LSP) in a Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) domain, comprising: learning and storing, by a Multicast Source Agent (MSA) node, multicast stream information, wherein the multicast stream information includes a mapping relationship between a multicast group and a multicast source, and/or the location of an ingress node in the MPLS domain, and wherein the MSA node starts a corresponding aging timer when the MSA node receives a new mapping relationship between the multicast source and the multicast group, and deletes the corresponding aging timer when the MSA node receives a notification about failure of the relationship between the multicast source and the multicast group; receiving, by the MSA node, a query request message in the MPLS domain, and obtaining and sending corresponding multicast stream information to an egress edge node in the MPLS domain; joining, by the egress edge node, the multicast group according to the obtained multicast stream information, and establishing a multicast LSP between the ingress edge node and the egress edge node.