Patent ID: 8295200

Claim:
A method of determining whether an access network supports multicast-based IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) services from an IPTV service provider, the method comprising: a terminal sending a request to join a known multicast IP address for the IPTV service provider via the access network to a router, wherein the known multicast IP address is specific to the IPTV service provider; receiving a tone signal via the access network, wherein the tone signal is multicasted from the IPTV service provider to multiple terminals using the multicast IP address from the IPTV service provider and the tone signal identifies the IPTV service provider providing the multicast IP address and describes services available from the IPTV service provider; determining whether the tone signal is encoded with a unique identifier of the IPTV service provider; and determining whether the access network supports the multicast-based IPTV services from the IPTV service provider in response to determining the tone signal is encoded with the unique identifier of the IPTV service provider.