Patent ID: 7936753

Claim:
An adapter for processing a multicast message including one or more packets to be sent to a plurality of destinations, comprising: an entry port that receives the multicast message from a source for transmission to the plurality of destinations; at least one egress port that transmits the one or more packets of the multicast message to the plurality of destinations and the at least one egress port receives an acknowledgement for the one or more packets from one or more of the destinations; and a message manager that monitors delivery status for the one or more packets of the multicast message to the plurality of destinations without using a plurality of dedicated individual connections between each of the plurality of destinations and the source, and sends a consolidated delivery status for the multicast message to the source after transmission of all the packets of the multicast message; wherein when the message manager receives the multicast message, the message manager creates a data structure to track and process each of the packets, builds an entry for a flow key that is a unique identifier of a source of the multicast message, and builds an entry for a packet sequence number.