Patent ID: 8787383

Claim:
A method of operation in a communication network environment, the communication network environment including a number of networked client devices that execute end-user applications and a number of non-user network infrastructure devices, the networked client devices and the non-user network infrastructure devices communicatively coupled in at least a first, a second, and a third local area network (LAN) separated from each other by a wide area network (WAN), the LANs being IP-multicast-capable and the WAN being non-IP-multicast-capable, the method comprising: dynamically electing ones of the networked client devices in the first LAN as a first LAN distributed convergence node at respective times, at least the elected networked client device in the first LAN executing at least one end-user application; designating a device in the second LAN as a second LAN distributed convergence node, the second LAN distributed convergence node being a routing distributed convergence node; dynamically electing ones of the networked client devices in the third LAN as a third LAN distributed convergence node at respective times, at least the elected networked client device in the third LAN executing at least one end-user application; and communicating traffic between the first and the third LAN distributed convergence nodes via the routing distributed convergence node, wherein the traffic is communicated between the networked client devices within each of the first, the second and the third LANs via the end-user applications executing on the elected networked client devices using IP multicast communication, and the traffic is communicated between the first distributed convergence node and the routing distributed convergence node and between the routing distributed convergence node and the second distributed convergence node using unicast communication.