Patent ID: 7200654

Claim:
A method of constructing and managing an overlay multicast tree on the Internet, the overlay multicast tree including a sender, one or more receivers and one or more agents for relaying data, comprising: requesting access by a new participant to the overlay multicast tree from a tree manager while transmitting network characteristic information thereof to the tree manager; determining an optimal parent node in consideration of the network characteristic information of the new participant having requested access at the first step and network characteristic information of agents participating in a currently constructed overlay multicast tree, and transmitting information of the determined parent node to the new participant; and establishing data channels of the new participant on the basis of the information of the determined parent node, wherein the determining the optimal parent node includes searching nodes on the currently constructed overlay multicast tree for any nodes having a same subnet ID as the new participant; selecting as a parent a node having a minimal tree level or minimal number of child nodes from the nodes having the same subnet ID if at least one node is found to have the same subnet ID as the new participant; selecting as a parent a node having a minimal tree level or minimal number of child nodes from all the nodes of the overlay multicast tree if no nodes having the same subnet ID as the new participant are found; and notifying the new participant of the node selected as a parent via a response message.