Patent ID: 7499419

Claim:
A machine-assisted method of multicast packet forwarding comprising: assigning a first pointer to each one of one or more multicast sessions, in which each first pointer points to a chain of one or more blocks of second pointers, in which each second pointer corresponds to an outbound interface (OIF) participating in the multicast session defined by the first pointer; assigning one of one or more transmit control blocks (TCBs) to each second pointer, in which each TCB is a data structure containing control information relevant to processing or routing packets and identifies the OIF out which packets of the multicast session are transmitted; receiving a packet of a first multicast session; replicating the packet of the first multicast session for each OIF participating in the multicast session; and transmitting a replicated packet of the first multicast session out from the OIF participating in the multicast session, including using the TCB to determine the OIF participating in the multicast session.