Patent ID: 7724649

Claim:
A method comprising: assigning a priority level to each of a plurality of uplinks that are configured for an Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) proxy device, wherein the uplinks comprise a primary uplink and at least one standby uplink; replicating, by the IGMP proxy device, a multicast packet received from the primary uplink and sending the multicast packet replicated over a downlink to a multicast host; checking the primary uplink periodically to determine whether an IGMP membership query message from a multicast source has been received on the primary uplink at a predetermined interval; and choosing a new primary uplink according to an availability and a priority level for each of the uplinks and designating the other uplinks as standby uplinks if the IGMP membership query message from a multicast source has not been received at the predetermined interval, wherein choosing a new primary uplink according to an availability and a priority level for each of the plurality of standby uplinks comprises one of: checking whether each of the plurality of standby uplinks is available, recording the priority level of a plurality of available standby uplinks, prioritizing the available uplinks, and choosing the available uplink with the highest priority level as a primary uplink; and arranging the plurality of standby uplinks according to the priority level of each of the standby uplinks, checking whether each of the standby uplinks is available according to an order of the priority level from high to low, and choosing the highest priority of the plurality of available standby uplinks as the primary uplink.