Forwarding multicast packets in a VPLS router on the basis of MAC addresses

摘要

Layer two (L2) forwarding of multicast traffic between routers of a Virtual Private local area network (LAN) Service (VPLS) domain is described. For example, the techniques allow multicast traffic to generally be forwarded between VPLS routers based on L2 information only, without requiring the routers to examine any layer three (L3) information carried by the multicast traffic for forwarding the multicast traffic. A router dynamically learns a mapping between a multicast source device and an L2 address of a router that introduces multicast traffic into the VPLS domain from the multicast source device. The router installs forwarding information based on the mapping that specifies the L2 address of the router that introduces the multicast traffic, and an L2 multicast group address of the multicast group, and forwards multicast traffic for the multicast group based on the forwarding information without reference to any L3 information of the multicast traffic.