Patent ID: 7733810

Claim:
A method to use in a node within a network comprising a transport layer protocol providing end to end data transfer, for multicasting datagrams on a virtual ring, each node on the virtual ring being logically connected according to the network transport layer protocol to an upstream neighbor node and a downstream neighbor node through virtual connections, comprising: sending a datagram to the downstream neighbor node on the virtual ring, said datagram including a virtual ring identifier, a source address of a sending node, a destination address of a next node on the ring, a source port, a destination port, and an identifier for a node originator of the datagram; each node including said ring identifier; identifying the received datagram upon receipt of the datagram; determining if the received datagram is a token generated by a virtual ring manager, wherein the token comprises a sequence number incremented each time the token is received by the virtual ring manager node, and forwarding the token to the downstream neighbor node on the identified virtual ring if the token is valid, wherein said manager is responsible for validating and modifying a ring topology; determining if the received datagram is a virtual ring datagram containing data other than a token; forwarding said virtual ring datagram to the downstream neighbor node on the identified virtual ring if the received virtual ring datagram has not been locally originated; and removing the virtual ring datagram from the virtual ring if the received virtual ring datagram has been locally originated.