Patent ID: 8638708

Claim:
An apparatus for Internet-Protocol based communications in a wireless network, the apparatus comprising: a first network interface to receive a series of multicast data packets from an Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) server, the series of multicast data packets corresponding to a video stream addressed to a group of one or more receiving nodes in a wireless network; a processor and memory to convert the received series of multicast data packets into one or more unicast packets, wherein the series of multicast data packets is converted into one or more unicast data packets addressed to the one or more receiving nodes in the wireless network, and wherein the multicast data packets are converted in accordance with a map of media access control (MAC) addresses corresponding to the one or more receiving nodes in the wireless network; and a second network interface to wirelessly transmit the one or more unicast data packets to the one or more receiving nodes using an 802.x protocol, wherein the effective unicast rate for the one or more unicast data packets exceeds a minimum data rate of the series of multicast data packets using the 802.x protocol.