Patent ID: 8477622

Claim:
A method comprising: designating one or more network elements of a network as one or more local multicast service providers; mapping the one or more local multicast service providers with a plurality of multicast groups; receiving an allocation request to join one of the multicast groups; determining whether a first policy resource manager or a second policy resource manager can accommodate the allocation request, wherein the policy resource managers have a hierarchical relationship with respect to knowledge of resources of the network; determining whether the network can accommodate the allocation request using either the first policy resource manager or the second policy resource manager; modifying the network to accommodate the allocation request by modifying the mapping of the one or more local multicast service providers with the multicast groups; and designating other ones of the network elements as the first policy resource manager or the second policy resource manager, wherein the first policy manager is designated as a local policy resource manager configured to manage resources that are directly connected to the local policy resource manager, and the second policy manager is designated as a domain policy resource manager configured to manage resources across a domain of the network.