Minimum-cost spanning trees of unicast tunnels for multicast distribution
US8310957B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | Mar 9, 2010 |
| Grant date | Nov 13, 2012 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | May 21, 2031 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04L45/48
- WIPO fieldDigital communication
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
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.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.