Patent ID: 6850987

Claim:
A method for distributing data in a data network, wherein the data network connects a plurality of nodes and at least a portion of the plurality of the nodes form a multicast group, wherein one of the nodes in the multicast group is designated a rendezvous node, the method comprising: maintaining a data store containing a group state at each of the nodes in the multicast group; receiving at the rendezvous node state updates generated at one of the nodes in the multicast group other than the rendezvous node; updating the group state in the data store at the rendezvous node with the state updates; propagating the state updates, using a reliable unicast protocol, from the rendezvous node to the other nodes in the multicast group, a reliable unicast protocol being a protocol with error recovery capabilities; and updating the group state in the data stores at the other nodes in the multicast group, wherein the group state contained in the data store maintained at each of the nodes in the multicast group includes at least one tuple of information as part of a persistent data store associated with the multicast group, the tuple of information comprising at least a group identifier, a unique name, and a value; wherein the unique name is hierarchical name space allowing a plurality of names to be organized at each of a plurality of hierarchies; and wherein the hierarchical name space corresponds to the multicast group and is independent of other hierarchical name spaces corresponding to other multicast groups.