Patent ID: 6782490
Filing Date: 2004-08-24
Classification: G06F,H04L

Abstract:
A network, including a source of multicast packets in a multicast session and a plurality of multicast recipients in that session, comprising:a repair server in the network monitoring received ones of the packets to said recipients, the repair server including a missing packet detector; and a plurality of retransmit servers in the network buffering portions of the packets during the session; said repair server detecting missing packets and in response thereto, sequentially requesting missing packets from respective ones of the plurality of retransmit servers; said repair server including all ordered list of the retransmit servers that are most likely to have buffered copies of packets missing from the session; said repair server detecting that there are packets missing from the session it has received, and using the ordered list to sequentially request the missing packets from respective ones of the plurality of retransmit servers; and said ordered list ranking the respective retransmit servers based on receiver reports multicast by each of the retransmit servers.