Patent ID: 9237025
Filing Date: 2016-01-12
CPC Classification: H04L

Claim Text:
1. A computer-implemented method comprising: receiving, at a first network device, a multicast packet of a multicast transmission from a multicast source; inserting a header including one or more fields of information for a multicast distribution tree into the multicast packet, wherein the one or more fields of information include a root level node field indicating a root node of the multicast distribution tree and one or more second level fields indicating one or more child nodes of the root node of the multicast distribution tree, wherein the multicast distribution tree comprises a point-to-multipoint tree and the one or more fields of information are not duplicative of routing information, stored by the first network device, corresponding to the one or more child nodes, and wherein the one or more fields of information identify links between respective nodes for forwarding the multicast packet; and forwarding the multicast packet including the inserted header to respective network devices corresponding to the one or more child nodes based on the one or more fields of information from the inserted header.