Patent ID: 7545825

Claim:
A method for managing multicast subscribers-in a network, comprising: (1) data related with multicast service being classified into multicast-related record data and multicast route data, said multicast-related record data being stored in the network for query, while said multicast route data being hierarchically stored in the network to determine how to forward multicast data depending on topological distribution of multicast group subscribers in the network; (2) when a subscriber joins in a multicast group or a multicast subscriber exits a multicast group, said hierarchically-stored multicast route data and said multicast-related record data in said network being modified accordingly; (3) when the multicast subscriber performs position update in the network, said hierarchically-stored multicast route data being updated accordingly; wherein in step (1), said multicast route data is classified into 2 tiers to be stored in the network, wherein, data in tier 1 is stored in a GGSN (Gateway General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) Support Node) to record how to forward received multicast data to a SGSN (Serving General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) Support Node); while data in tier 2 is stored in the SGSN to record how to forward received multicast data to subscriber cells; wherein a subscriber joining in a multicast group in step (2) comprising the following steps: (A1) the subscriber sending a request to the SGSN comprising a number of a Group which the subscriber will join in; (A2) the SGSN parsing out an only corresponding GGSN according to the Group No. and an optimization strategy, and forwarding the subscriber's request to the GGSN; (A3) the GGSN implementing corresponding operation according to the subscriber's request to determine whether the subscriber is allowed to join in the multicast subscriber group, and if yes, returning a ‘Multicast Subscriber Group Activation indication’ to the SGSN; (A4) after receiving the ‘Multicast Subscriber Group Activation indication’, the SGSN instructing a Radio Access Network (RAN) to implement operations to add the subscriber into the multicast group, the RAN returning a result to the SGSN after adding the subscriber into the multicast group, the SGSN modifying corresponding SGSN multicast-related record data and a SGSN multicast route table comprising the data in tier 2 according to a current position of the subscriber to reflect that the subscriber has joined in the multicast group and reflect a topological distribution of subscribers in the multicast group in the network; (A5) the SGSN feeding-back a multicast activated response message to the GGSN, and the GGSN modifying a GGSN multicast route table comprising the data in tier 1 according to the message; (A6) the SGSN informing a Home Position Register (HLR) that the subscriber has joined in the multicast subscriber group, and the HLR modifying the multicast-related record data of the subscriber to reflect the fact that the subscriber has joined in the multicast group.