The implementation of anycast RP for PIM-SM environments enables fast convergence when a PIM rendezvous point (RP) router fails by allowing receivers and sources to rendezvous at the closest RP. It allows an arbitrary number of RPs per group in a single shared-tree protocol Independent Multicast-Sparse Mode (PIM-SM) domain. This is particularly important for triple play configurations that choose to distribute multicast traffic using PIM-SM, not SSM. In this case, RP convergence must be fast enough to avoid the loss of multicast streams, which could cause loss-of-TV delivery to the end customer.
Anycast RP for PIM-SM environments are supported in the base routing/PIM-SM instance of the service router. This feature is supported in Layer 3-VPRN instances that are configured with PIM.