Patent ID: 8761069

Claim:
A network device, comprising: a first interface configured to receive a plurality of multicast packets; a control module configured to determine whether two or more of the plurality of multicast packets each have a same multicast address; a packet aggregation module configured to, in response to the control module determining that the two or more of the plurality of multicast packets have the same multicast address, generate aggregate data based on the two or more of the plurality of multicast packets; a packet format module configured to, in response to the packet aggregation module generating the aggregate data, add a header to the aggregate data to generate a unicast packet; a second interface configured to, subsequent to the packet format module adding the header to the aggregate data, transmit the unicast packet; and a multicast module, wherein the packet aggregation module is configured to concatenate the two or more of the plurality of multicast packets to generate the aggregate data, the second interface is configured to transmit the unicast packet to one of a plurality of wireless clients in a wireless local area network, the multicast module is configured to generate a table, wherein entries in the table relate media access control addresses of the plurality of wireless clients to multicast addresses, the control module is configured to, prior to concatenating the two or more of the plurality of multicast packets, drop one of the plurality of multicast packets, if the multicast address of the one of the plurality of multicast packets is not listed in the table, and the multicast module is configured to disable the one of the plurality of wireless clients including removing an entry for the one of the plurality of wireless clients from the table, if a timeout timer for the one of the plurality of wireless clients expires or if an Internet group management protocol leave message is received from the one of the plurality of wireless clients.