IETF RFC 5384 PDF

A "Protocol Independent Multicast - Sparse Mode" Join message sent by a given node identifies one or more multicast distribution trees that that node wishes to join. Each tree is identified by the combination of a multicast group address and a source address (where the source address is possibly a "wild card"). Under certain conditions it can be useful, when joining a tree, to specify additional information related to the construction of the tree. However, there has been no way to do so until now. This document describes a modification of the Join message that allows a node to associate attributes with a particular tree. The attributes are encoded in Type-Length-Value format.