Patent ID: 8289883

Claim:
A method of multicast routing in a wireless mesh network, comprising: maintaining a multicast logical tree having a structure establishing parent-child connectivity relationships between wireless station nodes, wherein each node has access to local connectivity information for its local nodes; a wireless station node joining a multicast group in the network, and each group member or router propagating group membership information and the local connectivity information via message transmission among its local nodes in the logical tree; and performing multicast packet forwarding communications among the multicast group members, wherein multicast packets comprise group request and group reply command frames, wherein a forwarded group reply command frame is not required to follow a route of a group request command frame, wherein a node is configured such that when a multicast group member or group coordinator is in a neighbor list of an intermediate node in relation to the joining node, then receiving a group reply packet without waiting for the group request packet to reach the multicast group member or the group coordinator.