Patent ID: 7936774

Claim:
A method for multicasting information from a first device of a network and a group of peer devices of the network, the method comprises: utilizing a distributed media access control scheme for allocating, by coordinating between the first device and the group of peer devices, at least one timeslot for a transmission of information from the first device to the group of peer devices to provide at least one time slot allocated for the transmission of the information; and allocating at least one timeslot for a transmission of acknowledgement messages, from each of the peer devices of the group, indicative of a reception of the information from each of the peer devices of the group to provide at least one time slot allocated for the transmission of the acknowledgement messages; and multicasting the information during the at least one time slot allocated for the transmission of the information; wherein in the network there is no central media access controller; wherein a first time slot out of the at least one time slot allocated for the transmission of information does not follow a first time slot out of the at least one time slot allocated for the transmission of the acknowledgement messages; wherein the utilizing of the distributed media access control scheme for allocating, by coordinating comprises: requesting, by the first device and from the peer devices of the group, to transmit the information and to allow the transmission of acknowledgement messages from the peer devices of the group during at least one distributed reservation protocol (DRP) slot of a time division multiple access (TDMA) frame; and accepting, by peer devices of the group, the request.