MPLS and Multicast

[drheams]

We are running an ethernet to the premise network providing ip voice, video, and data services. This works very well but we do not have a good solution to provide private links for our business customers. I am looking at using MPLS tunnels but because the video traffic is all multicast, the layer 2 tunnels do not appear as though they will work well in the network. Has anyone successfully deployed MPLS in a multicast network? Any other suggestions for this type of connectivity?

[vkapoor5]

see the following link for more information about MPLS in multicast network

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk436/tk428/tech_digest09186a00800b2cd5.html

[sultan-shaikh]

As of now only one draft is floating in IETF for IP Mulitcast in MPLS environment. So currently MPLS cannot make IP Multicast happen, simply put they can interoperate in a same netwrok but MPLS benefits "cannot" be used for IP Mulitcast.

Check the link for the draft.

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-mpls-multicast-08.txt

cheers,

sultan..