A New Approach to Construct Multicast Trees in MPLS Networks

Overview

This paper presents a new approach to construct multicast trees in MPLS networks. This approach utilizes MPLS LSPs between multicast tree branching node routers in order to reduce forwarding states and enhance scalability. In authors approach only routers that are acting as multicast tree branching node for a group need to keep forwarding state for that group. All other non-branching node routers simply forward data packets over traffic engineered unicast routes using MPLS LSPs. This paper briefly discuss MPLS, the multicast scalability problem, merging the two technologies, related works and different techniques for forwarding state reduction.