The implementation of Anycast RP for PIM-SM environments enable 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, in particular, important for triple play configurations that opt 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 is 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.