Inclusive and selective P-tunnels

The P-tunnel can be inclusive or selective:

• An inclusive P-tunnel is a tunnel that starts at an ingress PE and ends at all egress PEs within the multicast VPN. Customer requirements and the need for Service-Provider configuration determine whether an inclusive P-tunnel is needed. For example, if Customer A in GUID-4365F8B8-2580-4C48-B827-AFBF157F0CE9.html#GUID-4365F8B8-2580-4C48-B827-AFBF157F0CE9___MPLS_USER_APDX_MULTICASTVPN_20035 has multicast sourced at Site 1 only, only PE-1 needs to be configured to initiate an inclusive P-tunnel.

  An inclusive P-tunnel does not attach to any specific multicast group. (A multicast group has a multicast group IP address in the range of 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255.) Any multicast group from Customer A Site 1 will be forwarded to all egress PEs within the multicast VPN, even if some sites have no multicast receivers to join the multicast groups.

• A selective P-tunnel carries traffic for one or more multicast groups to egress PEs that have receivers that have joined the groups. A selective P-tunnel can be created for each multicast group, or a selective P-tunnel can be created for several multicast groups.