Patent ID: 8842553

Claim:
A method for multicasting over a communications system having a communications path between a server side of the communications system and a plurality of clients, the communications path comprising a shared forward link over which bandwidth resources are shared during a multicast communication, the method comprising: intercepting a data block at the server side of the communications system, the data block comprising a header portion and a content portion and being communicated over the communications path; generating a fingerprint using byte-level information comprised by the content portion of the data block; using the fingerprint to make a matching determination, the matching determination indicating whether the data block matches a logged data block having previously been communicated to at least one of the plurality of clients of the communications system; determining whether a trigger event has occurred according to the matching determination; and when the trigger event has occurred according to the matching determination, multicasting the data block from the server side of the communications system over the communications path.