Patent ID: 7471679

Claim:
A method of receivability test of explicit multicast of a receiver end, the method comprising: at a sender end, generating and sending a receivability probe packet to the receiver end being in data communication with the sender end via a network; at the receiver end, receiving the receivability probe packet; generating, at the receiver end, an internet control message protocol (ICMP) error message-Destination Unreachable corresponding to the receivability probe packet; sending the ICMP error message-Destination Unreachable to the sender end; at the sender end, receiving the ICMP error message-Destination Unreachable; and at the sender end, determining the explicit multicast receivability by analyzing the ICMP error message-Destination Unreachable, wherein the receivability probe packet comprises an IP header, an explicit multicast header, a UDP header and an arbitrary payload, wherein the IP header comprises a source address field that is assigned to the sender end, a destination address field that is assigned to the receiver end and a protocol field, wherein the explicit multicast header comprises an X bit field, a list of addresses field, a number of destination field and a protocol ID field, and wherein the UDP header comprises a source port field and a destination port field.