Patent ID: 7512085

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving a multicast packet directed to a plurality of mobile nodes, the mobile nodes being associated with a home subnet; identifying if any of the plurality of mobile nodes are coupled to a subnet other than the home subnet, wherein each of the identified mobile nodes has an associated transmission path through which that mobile node can be reached; in response to determining that at least some of the mobile nodes are coupled to the subnet other than the home subnet, determining which of the identified mobile nodes has a common next hop in their associated transmission path; generating a packet including at least a portion of the multicast packet and including in the packet a list of mobile nodes that have the common next hop, wherein the packet includes an IP header field allowing insertion of an extension header between the IP header field and a payload portion of the packet, and further wherein the extension header is a hop-by-hop extension header that includes the list of the plurality of mobile nodes to which the multicast packet is directed; and transmitting the generated packet to the common next hop.