Patent ID: 7710986

Claim:
A method for supporting multicast communication in a communication network, the method comprising: forming a multicast group comprising a plurality of client devices, wherein the client devices comprise one or more mesh network devices operating in a wireless mesh network domain and one or more non-routable devices proxied by at least one mesh network device, arranged in a multi-hop multicast tree, and communicating using a wireless multicast routing protocol, wherein the wireless multicast group includes an internet access point (IAP); communicating with the internet access point by at least one remotely located client device via one or more mesh network devices along the multi-hop multicast tree within the multicast group; operating the internet access point as a multicast group forwarding node for the plurality of client devices of the multicast group; running a group management protocol between the internet access point and an internet edge router to register the plurality of client devices of the multicast group with the internet edge router; and running a wired multicast routing protocol to join the internet edge router to a global internet multicast group, thereby providing access to the global internet multicast group to the plurality of client devices of the multicast group.