Patent ID: 9432205
Filing Date: 2016-08-30
CPC Classification: H04L

Claim Text:
1. A method implemented by a network device to forward a packet that is encoded using an explicit block encoding of multicast group membership information with Bit Index Explicit Replication (BIER), the method comprising the steps of: receiving a packet, wherein the packet includes a bitstring having a set of blocks, each block including a set identifier (SI) field and a SubBitString field; selecting an unprocessed block from the set of blocks for processing; finding a first bit position of a SubBitString of the selected block, wherein the first bit position identifies a destination bit-forwarding router (BFR); looking up a forwarding bitmask for the destination BFR and a next-hop neighbor to reach the destination BFR in a bit index forwarding table (BIFT); creating a copy of the packet; applying a bit-wise AND operation on a bitstring of the copy of the packet with the forwarding bitmask; forwarding the copy of the packet to the next-hop neighbor; and applying a bit-wise AND operation on the bitstring of the packet with an inverse of the forwarding bitmask.