Patent ID: 7280542

Claim:
A multicast method for directing a root flow in an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) environment to a plurality of egress interfaces using a corresponding number of leaf flows, comprising the steps: initializing a circularly-linked pointer list, wherein a plurality of linked pointers point to a corresponding number of cell memory locations in a memory space; upon receiving root flow cells in said ATM environment, storing said cells in said cell memory locations based on a root flow index associated with said root flow, wherein said root flow index is initialized to a particular pointer of said linked pointer list for storing a head root flow cell and is updated through said linked pointers upon arrival of additional root flow cells; initializing a plurality of leaf flow index values, wherein each index value corresponds to a leaf flow and is initialized to said particular pointer pointing to a cell memory location containing said head root flow cell; when a particular leaf flow becomes eligible for scheduling, obtaining a copy of said head root cell for emission to an egress interface associated with said particular leaf flow and updating its leaf flow index value to refer to a next one of said linked pointer list; and upon scheduling a particular root flow cell for each of said leaf flows, writing a new root flow cell in said particular root flow cell's memory location.