Patent ID: 7590115

Claim:
A method comprising: using a label distribution protocol, establishing a point-to-multipoint (P2MP) label switched path (LSP) forming a multicast tree for transporting layer two (L2) multicast data packets for one or more virtual private local area network service (VPLS) multicast instances, wherein the multicast tree includes a source device providing an ingress to the P2MP LSP and a plurality of destination devices providing egresses from the P2MP LSP, wherein each of the plurality of destination devices is coupled to one or more respective customer networks having local VPLS sites and belongs to at least one VPLS multicast instance; after establishing the P2MP LSP, receiving with one or more of the destination devices multicast group join or prune messages from at least one of the customer networks and destined for the source device of the P2MP LSP; converting the multicast group join or prune messages into routing protocol advertisements by generating the routing protocol advertisements in accordance with a routing protocol different from the label distribution protocol and encoding the join or prune messages within the routing protocol advertisements as control information for the VPLS multicast instances, wherein encoding the multicast group join or prune messages comprises encoding in each of the routing protocol advertisements a route distinguisher that corresponds to the VPLS multicast instance to which each multicast group specified in the multicast group join or prune message belongs, an address of a multicast source associated with each of the multicast groups, and an address of each of the multicast groups; and transmitting the encoded routing protocol advertisements via the routing protocol to communicate the join or prune messages from the destination devices to the source device of the P2MP LSP.