Patent ID: 8068492

Claim:
A method comprising: using a first tunneling protocol, establishing a multicast tree having a source router providing an ingress to the multicast tree and a plurality of destination routers providing a plurality of different egresses from the multicast tree within a network, wherein each of the destination routers belongs to at least one multicast virtual private network (MVPN); and using a second tunneling protocol different from the first tunneling protocol, establishing tunnels between the source router and the one or more destination routers; separately transporting control information and multicast data packets for the MVPNs between the source router and the one or more destination routers, wherein separately transporting the control information and the multicast data packets comprises: transporting the multicast data packets from the source router to the destination routers on the multicast tree in accordance with the first tunneling protocol, and transporting the control information between the source router and the destination routers using the tunnels in accordance with the second tunneling protocol.