Patent ID: 7110405

Claim:
An apparatus for receiving, storing and forwarding multicast cells and unicast cells, the apparatus comprising: a cell buffer, including a plurality of storage locations and a first database, for receiving and writing a multicast cell into a first one of its plurality of storage locations, for thereafter generating a plurality of first pointers, each referencing a separate one of said plurality of storage locations other than the first storage location to which the multicast cell was written, and for creating a separate entry in its first database for each generated first pointer, the entry relating the first pointer to the first storage location to which the multicast cell was written; and a queue manager for receiving the first pointers generated by the cell buffer and for thereafter returning the first pointers to the cell buffer, wherein upon receiving each first pointer returned by the queue manager, the cell buffer consults the first pointer's entry in the first database to determine the first storage location the entry relates to the first pointer, and then reads an instance of the multicast cell out of that first storage location.