Patent ID: 7864750

Claim:
A load distributing apparatus that is connected to a plurality of routers carrying out a transfer of multicast data to a plurality of terminals, the load distributing apparatus comprising: a network interface unit that receives a packet via a network; a packet identifying unit that identifies the received packet as a join message received from the terminals, a prune message received from the terminals, or a hello message received from the routers; a hello-message discarding unit that discards the identified hello message transferred from one of the routers to another router; a path-sorting-rule storing unit that stores a path-sorting rule for sorting the identified join message or the identified prune message and for specifying, for the sorted join message or the sorted prune message, a router among the routers; a packet sorting unit that sorts the identified join message or the identified prune message and specifies, for the sorted join message or the sorted prune message, a router among the routers based on the path-sorting rule stored in the path-sorting-rule storing unit; and a packet transferring unit that transfers the sorted join message or the sorted prune message to the specified router that carries out the transfer of multicast data in response to the sorted join message or the sorted prune message.