This document defines a reliable transport mechanism for the PIM protocol for transmission of Join/Prune messages. This eliminates the need for periodic Join/Prune message transmission and processing. The reliable transport mechanism can use either TCP or SCTP as the transport protocol.

Label Distribution Protocol (LDP) can be used to set up Point-toMultipoint (P2MP) and Multipoint-to-Multipoint (MP2MP) Label Switched Paths. However, the specification for the Multipoint Extensions to LDP presupposes that the two endpoints of an LDP session are directly connected. The LDP base specification allows for the case where the two endpoints of an LDP session are not directly connected; such a session is known as a "Targeted LDP" session. This document provides the specification for using the LDP Multipoint Extensions over a Targeted LDP session.

Consider an IP multicast tree, constructed by Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM), that needs to pass through an MPLS domain in which Multipoint LDP (mLDP) point-to-multipoint and/or multipoint-tomultipoint Labels Switched Paths (LSPs) can be created. The part of the IP multicast tree that traverses the MPLS domain can be instantiated as a multipoint LSP. When a PIM Join message is received at the border of the MPLS domain, information from that message is encoded into mLDP messages. When the mLDP messages reach the border of the next IP domain, the encoded information is used to generate PIM messages that can be sent through the IP domain. The result is an IP multicast tree consisting of a set of IP multicast sub-trees that are spliced together with a multipoint LSP. This document describes procedures regarding how IP multicast trees are spliced together with multipoint LSPs.

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