Patent ID: 8086755

Claim:
A method for providing multicast distribution in a network, the method comprising: modeling a multicast group, the multicast group identifying a set of processor nodes that are to receive a multicast data packet, into a linearly chained point to point topology having at least one chain, each chain including a plurality of processor nodes in the multicast group; receiving a multicast data packet at a control processor; forwarding a version of the multicast data packet from the control processor to a first processor node in each of the at least one chain; appending a data structure comprising multicast group membership information identifying each processor node in the modeled multicast group; to the multicast data packet; forwarding the multicast data packet from the first processor node in each of the at least one chain to a subsequent processor node in its respective chain based on the point to point topology using a unicast address; wherein the first processing node modifies the data structure in the multicast data packet to change the multicast group membership information contained therein to indicate that the first processing node has received the multicast data packet, wherein the first processing node forwards the multicast data packet with the modified data structure to a subsequent processing node, and wherein the data structure further comprises a sequence number indicative of an ordering of the multicast data packets; wherein the subsequent processor node modifies the data structure in the multicast data packet to change the multicast group membership information contained therein to indicate that the subsequent processor node has received the multicast data packet, and wherein the subsequent processor node forwards the multicast data packet with the modified data structure to another subsequent processor node; wherein the process of forwarding the multicast data packet and modifying the data structure therein is repeated until each processor node identified in the multicast group, in each of the at least one chain, has received the multicast data packet by such forwarding; and wherein the processor nodes communicate an interest in a multicast membership in response to multicast add or remove operations by higher layer network protocols operating on the processor node.