Patent ID: 7532621

Claim:
A method for enabling management of packet loss in a communications network, said method comprising the steps of: determining all at least one multicast group to which a selected node belongs, each of the at least one multicast group having a group number of nodes; determining a first subset of nodes that includes nodes in the communications network that are members of at least one of the at least one multicast group to which the selected node belongs; determining at least one second subset having a subset number of nodes, wherein the at least one second subset includes the selected node and nodes from the first subset that share all the at least one multicast group with each other; determining a number of repair packets sent per communications packets received for the at least one multicast group; computing at least one representative number corresponding to the at least one second subset; assigning the at least one representative number to each of the at least one second subsets; and preparing and sending repair packets based on the number of repair packets, the at least one representative number, and the communications packets received by the selected node to enable management of packet loss.