mLDP can be used to transport multicast in GRT. For mLDP LSPs to be generated, a multicast request from the leaf node is required to force mLDP to generate a downstream unsolicited (DU) FEC toward the root to build the P2MP LSPs.
For inter-AS solutions, the root may not be in the leaf’s RTM or, if it is present, it is installed using BGP with ASBRs acting as the leaf’s local AS root. Therefore, the leaf’s local AS intermediate routers may not know the path to the root.
Control protocols used for constructing P2MP LSPs contain a field that identifies the address of a root node. Intermediate nodes are expected to be able to look up that address in their routing tables; however, this is not possible if the route to the root node is a BGP route and the intermediate nodes are part of a BGP-free core (for example, if they use IGP).
To enable an mLDP LSP to be constructed through a BGP-free segment, the root node address is temporarily replaced by an address that is known to the intermediate nodes and is on the path to the true root node. For example, Figure: Inter-AS Option C shows the procedure when the PE-2 (leaf) receives the route for root through ASBR3. This route resembles the root next-hop ASBR-3. The leaf, in this case, generates an LDP FEC which has an opaque value, and has the root address set as ASBR-3. This opaque value has more information needed to reach the root from ASBR-3. As a result, the SR core AS3 only needs to be able to resolve the local AS ASBR-3 for the LDP FEC. The ASBR-3 uses the LDP FEC opaque value to find the path to the root.
Because non-segmented d-mLDP requires end-to-end mLDP signaling, the ASBRs support both mLDP and BGP signaling between them.