Patent ID: 7940765

Claim:
A method, performed by a switching device, with the method comprising: initially configuring a particular interface of the packet switching device to drop multicast data packets received from a plurality of hosts for a particular multicast group, with the plurality of hosts including a particular host; wherein the packet switching device is a first hop router for the particular host; receiving, from the particular host, by the packet switching device on the particular interface a datagram packet, with the datagram packet encapsulating a multicast application admission-control message for the particular multicast group identifying the particular host is a member of the particular multicast group; and automatically updating, in response to processing exclusively by the packet switching device of said received multicast application admission-control message: the particular interface to allow multicast data messages for the particular multicast group sent from the particular host such that said multicast data messages for the particular multicast group will no longer be dropped by the switching device, while the particular interface continues to be configured to drop multicast data packets sent to the particular multicast group by other hosts of the plurality hosts; wherein the particular interface was in a state that caused said multicast data messages sent from the particular host to be said dropped by the particular interface when said automatically updating operation was performed.