Patent attributes
The present disclosure is directed to a centralized control policy for multicast replicator selection. Methods include receiving multicast advertisements from a plurality of edge devices configured with multicast protocol, each multicast advertisement including information indicating whether an associated edge device is a replicator; analyzing multicast advertisements from the plurality of edge devices to identify one or more replicators; receiving a centralized policy configuration associated with at least one control policy that includes a preference related to selection of at least one replicator from the identified one or more replicators, the preference applicable to a defined set of edge devices from the plurality of edge devices; and updating at least one multicast advertisement with the control policy for transmission to the defined set of edge devices, the updated at least one multicast advertisement indicating the preference for replicator selection for the defined set of edge devices based on the control policy.