Patent ID: 8614955

Claim:
A method of testing a network, comprising: a source port unit transmitting, via the network, a packet addressed to a multicast group including a plurality of expected destinations, the packet including a destination signature indicative of all of the plurality of expected destinations; a receiving port unit receiving the packet, extracting the destination signature from the packet, and comparing the destination signature with a port filter associated with the receiving port unit to determine if the receiving port unit is one of the plurality of expected destinations for the received packet; when the receiving port unit is not one of the plurality of expected destinations for the received packet, incrementing a misdirected packet counter; when the receiving port unit is one of the plurality of expected destinations for the received packet, extracting test data from the received packet; wherein the destination signature is contained in a payload portion of the received packet; wherein the destination signature is configured to match all of a plurality of port filters respectively associated with the plurality of expected destinations for the packet and to not match port filters that are not expected destinations for the packet; and the port filter is configured to match destination signatures extracted from all packets for which the receiving port unit is an expected destination and to not match destination signatures extracted from packets for which the receiving port unit is not the expected destination.