Importance

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Abstract

A router determines a graph of unicast tunnels that connect a set of edge routers that will distribute multicast traffic in a network, wherein the graph comprises vertices and edges connecting one or more vertex pairs. The router calculates a minimum-cost spanning tree for the graph based on edge metric values, wherein the minimum-cost spanning tree includes the graph vertices and a selected subset of the graph edges, and wherein the minimum-cost spanning tree includes a first vertex that represents an ingress one of the set of edge routers for the multicast traffic and a second vertex that shares one of the edges with a third one of the vertices other than the first vertex representing the ingress edge router. The router then establishes an MPLS-based multicast distribution tree based on the calculated minimum-cost spanning tree to distribute the multicast traffic from the ingress router to the edge routers.

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First Claim