Patent ID: 8001227

Claim:
An apparatus for a universal plug and play (UPnP) service in a public network environment, the apparatus comprising: a UPnP multicast monitoring module to monitor an inputted frame and to request a discard of the frame if the frame is a UPnP multicast frame; a discard control module to discard the frame if the UPnP multicast monitoring module requests the discard of the frame; and a switching management module to register and to manage information on discarded frames, wherein the UPnP multicast monitoring module determines whether the frame is inputted from an outside of the public a private network and, if the frame is determined to be inputted from the outside, determines that the frame is not related to the UPnP multicast frame, and if the frame is not determined to be inputted from an outside, determines whether a multicast and/or a broadcast bit is set in a UPnP multicast IP, and, if the multicast and/or broadcast bit is set in the UPnP multicast IP, determines that the inputted frame is the UPnP multicast frame, and wherein at least one of the UPnP multicast monitoring module, the discard control module and the switching management module is a hardware component.