Patent ID: 7590114

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a plurality of ports each adapted to receive Ethernet packets; a data-link layer switch controller, when one of the Ethernet packets comprises an Internet protocol (IP) multicast packet comprising an IP multicast destination address and an IP source address, to select one or more of the ports based upon the IP multicast destination address and the IP source address; and a memory to store associations between IP addresses and the ports, wherein the data-link layer switch controller is further to select the one or more of the ports based upon the associations stored in the memory, wherein the data-link layer switch controller is further: to identify one of the associations stored in the memory based on the IP multicast destination address and the IP source address, and to confirm the association is an association between an IP address and the ports, wherein, to confirm the association is an association between an IP address and the ports, the data-link layer switch controller is further to determine whether the association is marked as an IP multicast association, and wherein, to determine whether the association is marked as an IP multicast association, the data-link layer switch controller is further to determine whether a flag stored in the memory and corresponding to the association is set.