Patent ID: 8706897

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, by a first device and from a plurality of second devices, requests for a media stream; transmitting, by the first device and to a third device, a request for the media stream based on receiving the requests for the media stream; transmitting, by the first device and to the third device, a plurality of first messages, each message, of the plurality of first messages, identifying a corresponding one of the plurality of second devices as requesting the media stream, and the plurality of first messages including first Layer 2 Control (L2C) messages; receiving, by the first device and from the third device, the media stream; receiving, by the first device and from the third device, a plurality of second messages based on the plurality of first messages, the plurality of second messages including second L2C messages, each of the plurality of second messages indicating whether the media stream is to be provided to a corresponding one of the plurality of second devices; and providing, by the first device, the media stream to one or more of the plurality of second devices based on a corresponding one or more of the plurality of second messages.