Patent ID: 7623536

Claim:
A network relaying method comprising: a first step of discriminating join/leave information transmitted by a client to a multicast group, wherein the first step discriminates the join/leave information of the client mounted on a multicast control packet from the client; a second step of processing the join/leave information of the client into multicast join/leave notifying information; and a third step of transferring the multicast join/leave notifying information to a server with the multicast join/leave notifying packet, wherein when transferring the multicast join/leave notifying packet to the server and receiving join/leave information for a same multicast group from another client within a fixed time, the second step generates an aggregated join/leave notifying packet in which the join/leave information for all of the clients is aggregated in a single packet and the third step transfers the aggregated join/leave notifying packet to the server, and wherein when the first step discriminates a reception of the aggregated join/leave notifying packet from a downstream network device, the third step further transfers the aggregated join/leave notifying packet to the server.