Patent ID: 8792346

Claim:
A method of performing multicast admission control in a communications network, comprising: receiving, at a first node of a multicast tree of the communications network, a request for a multicast channel from a host system communicatively coupled to the first node; sending, by the first node, a request for a multicast channel to a central admission controller of the communications network, the sending of the request being triggered by receiving the request from the host system; determining, by the central admission controller, if sufficient resources exist on nodes and interconnecting links of the multicast tree of the communications network to provide the requested multicast channel from a source to the host system; and replicating the multicast channel on the nodes having sufficient resources to provide the requested multicast channel to the host system, if the determining step determines that sufficient resources exists, wherein the requested multicast channel is replicated in parallel to the multicast channel on the nodes.