Patent ID: 7742457

Claim:
A digital home communication terminal (DHCT) for reducing multicast IP packet bandwidth in a local area network carrying Internet protocol television (IPTV) traffic, the DHCT comprising: logic for determining an IP multicast address and a port identifier, each associated with a slave DHCT; logic for transmitting a layer-2 multicast address derived from the IP multicast address and the port identifier to the switch as a request for the switch to operate in a first multicast configuration, the layer-2 switch operating in the first multicast configuration to associate the first layer-2 multicast address with the data port, examine layer-2 packets having a layer-2 multicast destination address, and forward the examined layer-2 multicast packets on the data port, wherein the forwarding occurs only if the layer-2 destination address is the first layer-2 multicast address.