Patent ID: 7170885

Claim:
A multicast communications apparatus comprising: two or more interfaces coupled to networks, respectively; a forwarding unit coupled to said two or more interfaces, said forwarding unit including: a storage unit for storing routing information and parts-of-routing-information, said routing information indicating relationships between address information and one or more outgoing interfaces, said address information comprising an arbitrary source address and an arbitrary multicast group address, said parts-of-routing-information indicating relationships between an arbitrary multicast group address and one or more outgoing interfaces; a first processing unit, when receiving a multicast packet from an arbitrary interface, for extracting from said routing information one or more outgoing interfaces having correspondence relationships with a multicast group address and a source address contained in said multicast packet, and transmitting said multicast packet from each of said one or more outgoing interfaces, said first processing unit determining said one or more outgoing interfaces to transmit said multicast packet by using said parts-of-routing-information, if said routing information does not contain address information matched with the multicast group address and the source address contained in said multicast packet; and a routing unit coupled to said forwarding unit, said routing unit including: a second processing unit for creating said parts-of-routing-information by exchanging information with another apparatus over a network, determining, using said parts-of-routing-information, one or more outgoing interfaces to transmit a multicast packet containing an arbitrary multicast group packet and an arbitrary source address, and creating said routing information, wherein said second processing unit distributes said parts-of-routing-information and said routing information thus created to said forwarding unit, and wherein said forwarding unit stores said parts-of-routing-information and said routing information thus distributed in said storage unit.