The Rendezvous Point (RP) in Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) acts as a meeting place for sources and receivers of multicast traffic. Its main purpose is to receive Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) join messages from multicast receivers. This allows the RP to know which multicast groups have interested receivers and to facilitate the creation of a distribution tree for multicast traffic. References: Implementing and Operating Cisco Service Provider Network Core Technologies (SPCOR)