Patent ID: 8576703

Claim:
A method comprising: selectively bicasting a multicast protocol-related packet, received at a processing component of a network device, to a first processor and a second processor based upon a multicast protocol-related packet type, wherein selectively bicasting comprises: upon determining the multicast protocol-related packet to be of a first type, sending, from the processing component, a copy of the multicast protocol-related packet to the first processor operating in active mode, the first processor performing a set of multicast routing-related functions in the active mode, and sending, from the processing component, a copy of the multicast protocol-related packet to the second processor operating in standby mode, the second processor not performing the set of multicast routing-related functions in the standby mode; updating, by the first processor, first multicast information maintained by the first processor based upon the copy of the multicast protocol-related packet received by the first processor; and updating, by the second processor, second multicast information maintained by the second processor based upon the copy of the multicast protocol-related packet received by the second processor.