Generic interoperability among multicast protocols

A method, comprising:

• receiving, by a first network device in an overlay network, a notification message comprising information indicating that a device reachable via a second network device of the overlay network has requested traffic of a multicast group, wherein the notification message is received from a tunnel in the overlay network between the first and second network devices;
• generating, by the first network device, a join request for the multicast group based on a multicast protocol which allows devices to request multicast traffic;
• sending, by the first network device, the join request to a third network device in an external network, which is outside of and is coupled to the overlay network;
• receiving, by the first network device, multicast traffic of the multicast group from the third network device;
• and
• sending, by the first network device, the multicast traffic via the tunnel to the second network device based on the notification message.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions to:

• operate a first network device in a first segment of a network as a rendezvous point (RP) of a first multicast protocol, wherein a respective multicast route in the first segment is established based on the first multicast protocol;
• receive, at the first network device operating as the RP, a first join request of the first multicast protocol for a multicast group;
• generate, at the first network device, a second join request for the multicast group based on a second multicast protocol;
• send, at the first network device, the second join request to a second network device in an overlay network coupled to a plurality of segments of the network;
• and
• receive, at the first network device, multicast traffic of the multicast group from a second segment of the network via the second network device.