Patent ID: 7349349

Claim:
A method for reliable multicasting on a communication network, the method comprising: sending one or more Request-to-Send (RTS) signals from a sender node of the network to one or more receiver nodes of the network, the RTS signals including a set of identifiers corresponding to the receiver nodes; sending one or more Clear-to-Send (CTS) signals from one or more of the receiver nodes according to an ordering function of the set of identifiers; sending a data packet from the sender node to the receiver nodes; sending one or more Acknowledgment (ACK) signals from one or more of the receiver nodes receiving the data packet to the sender node according to an ordering function of the set of identifiers; determining from the one or more CTS signals and the one or more ACK signals received by the sender node whether any of the receiver nodes did not receive the data packet correctly; and multicasting the data packet from the sender node to the one or more receiver nodes that did not correctly receive the data packet.