Patent ID: 7725925

Claim:
A multicast access control apparatus, that intersects a plurality of zones, comprising: an analyzer to analyze incoming data to identify a source zone and a destination zone associated with the incoming data; a memory having a database including access control rules; an access control engine to apply appropriate access control rules from the database to the incoming data based on the identified source zone and destination zone; a routing module to route the incoming data to a rendezvous point, located in a first domain, for routing the incoming data to a plurality of multicast recipients, the routing module routing the incoming data to the rendezvous point when the access control rules permit routing of the incoming data, and where the rendezvous point is not accessible from a domain external to the first domain; and a proxy rendezvous point, located in the multicast access control apparatus and in the first domain, to perform functions of the rendezvous point for domains that are external to the first domain and to proxy the incoming data for a recipient based on the applied access control rules.