Patent ID: 10200275

Abstract:
Methods and systems for hardware-accelerated packet multicasting are provided. According to one embodiment, a first multicast packet to be multicast to a first multicast destination is received by a virtual routing system. The multicast packet is caused to be transmitted to the multicast destination by: (i) directing the multicast packet to a first VR of multiple VRs instantiated within the virtual routing system by selecting the first VR from among the multiple VRs to multicast the multicast packet; (ii) configuring the virtual routing system to use a routing context associated with the selected VR in connection with processing of the multicast packet; (iii) reading at least a portion of the multicast packet from one of multiple multicast address spaces associated with the selected VR; and (iv) forwarding the multicast packet to the first multicast destination. Similar steps are then performed for a second multicast packet.