Patent ID: 7626984

Claim:
A method for enabling congruent multicast and unicast routing in a Virtual Private Network (VPN), comprising: receiving a request to join a multicast group to receive multicast data traffic from a receiver behind a remote Provider Edge (PE) router or a locally connected Customer Edge (CE) router; and discovering a multicast source to allow said remote PE router or said locally connected CE router to use a direct path to receive said multicast data traffic from a source, wherein said VPN is a Multi-Protocol Label Switching/Border Gateway Protocol (MPLS/BGP) multicast VPN, wherein said discovering comprises: receiving a PIM (*,G) Join message by a Provider Edge (PE) router with a Customer Rendezvous Point (C-RP) behind said PE router from said remote PE router, where G is a multicast group; sending said received PIM (*,G) Join message by said PE router with said C-RP behind said PE router to said C-RP without forwarding multicast traffic on an interface that leads toward said VPN; and announcing said multicast source.