Patent ID: 8081629

Claim:
A method performed by a computing device having a memory and a processor, the method comprising: receiving, by the computing device, a packet having a first format and comprising at least one parameter relating to a multicast announce address, the multicast announce address having at least two associated destination addresses; associating, by the computing device, a dynamic session forwarding rules set with the packet if the at least one parameter has a defined value; using the dynamic session forwarding rules set to determine if any of the at least two destination addresses associated with the multicast announce address corresponds to a receiver that cannot receive packets of the first format; for each destination address corresponding to a receiver that cannot receive packets of the first format, converting, by the computing device, the packet from the first format to a format compatible with the corresponding receiver; for each destination address, forwarding a version of the packet to the destination address; and deleting the dynamic session forwarding rules set upon the occurrence of a specified condition, wherein the specified condition comprises reaching a predetermined limit for a parameter selected from the list consisting of session timeout, time limit, content size, content rate, hop count, and forwarding limit.