Patent ID: 8711872

Claim:
A data distribution apparatus, which delivers multicast data to each of terminals belonging to a multicast group at an L2 protocol, comprising: a processor; a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a computer program executable by the processor to implement: a correspondence table generating unit to generate a table, which includes a source address of the terminal and a destination address for requesting the multicast data in association with port information of the terminal; an address discrimination unit to discriminate a combination of the destination address and the source address contained in the multicast data being received; a forwarding destination information generation unit to generate forwarding destination information, which designates a forwarding destination of the multicast data by obtaining the port information of the terminal, included in the correspondence table, corresponding to the discriminated combination of the destination address and the source address, and inserts the forwarding destination information in the multicast data for transfer to an L2 switch; and a port selection unit and provided in the L2 switch to select each port to transfer the multicast data with referring to the forwarding destination information inserted in the multicast data and a routing table provided in the L2 switch at the L2 protocol, wherein the correspondence table generating unit includes an address extraction unit to extract the source address of the terminal and the destination address for requesting the multicast data contained in a control message on the multicast group transmitted from the terminal for managing delivery of the multicast data, wherein the correspondence table generating unit generates a virtual LAN (VLAN)-ID, which is unique value corresponding to the combination of the destination address and the source address included in the correspondence table, as one of contents of the correspondence table, and the forwarding destination information generation unit inserts the VLAN-ID corresponding to the combination of the destination address and the source address discriminated by the address discrimination unit; and wherein the contents of the correspondence table is transferred to the routing table in the L2 switch, wherein the routing table and the correspondence table operate in conjunction with one another to transfer the multicast data, and the correspondence table is an L3 table.