Patent ID: 8441963

Claim:
A method for provisioning a multicast stream in a tiered MCAD directory network that includes a first tier having a first Multicast Address Discovery (MCAD) directory and a second tier having a headend that includes a second MCAD directory and at least one MCAD-enabled device, the first MCAD directory coupled to the second level MCAD directory, the method comprising: producing, in the first tier of the tiered MCAD directory network, multicast streams for distribution to a second tier of the tiered MCAD directory network producing, by the MCAD directory in the first tier, descriptors for each of the multicast streams wherein an MCAD system stores multicast stream information in the multicast stream descriptors and the descriptors are stored at different tiers in the tiered MCAD directory network; wherein managing requests from an MCAD-enabled device in the tiered MCAD directory network includes: querying the MCAD directory in a tier of the requesting MCAD-enabled device for the multicast stream descriptor for the corresponding multicast stream for transmission to the MCAD-enabled device if the MCAD directory in the respective tier includes the multicast stream descriptor for the corresponding multicast stream, else, querying a higher tier in the MCAD directory network for the multicast stream descriptor for the corresponding multicast stream, via the MCAD directory in the tier of the requesting MCAD-enabled device, wherein the descriptors in the higher tier are accessible to devices in a lower tier via coupled MCAD directories, and transmitting the multicast stream descriptor for the corresponding multicast stream to the MCAD directory in the tier of the requesting MCAD-enabled device for storing for subsequent requests; wherein the requested multicast stream descriptor is transmitted by the MCAD directory in the tier of the requesting MCAD-enabled device to the MCAD-enabled device, parsing, by the MCAD-enabled device, a first multicast stream descriptor to obtain at least one set of video stream information; and provisioning, by the MCAD-enabled device, a first multicast stream that corresponds to the multicast stream descriptor using the at least one set of video stream information parsed from the first multicast stream descriptor.