Abstract— Nowadays, many IP backbone networks adopt
separate control and forwarding planes for unicast and multicast
traffic flows. Indeed, while MPLS (Multiprotocol Label
Switching) is widely deployed for unicast traffic, IP multicast is
the only available solution for the delivery of “one-to-many”
traffic flows. With P2MP LSPs (Point-to-Multipoint Label
Switched Paths) support, a unified control and forwarding plane
may be devised. Such a reduction in the number of protocols
used in the core of the network as well as in the number of
encapsulations in the data plane, results in simplified network
operations. The paper discusses the design and the development
of the control and data planes extensions needed to provide
P2MP LSP support in an MPLS node. In particular, such
extensions, concerning the P2MP LSPs path computation, the
RSVP-TE signalling protocol, and the forwarding mechanism,
have been implemented as new software modules for an ad-hoc
developed simulator, based on NS2. Finally, tests have been
performed to assess the behaviour of the new functionalities
introduced in the simulator.
