Patent ID: 8743897

Claim:
A method of processing a downstream scheduling of a multicast service flow in a Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS), the method comprising: receiving a multicast packet; determining whether a start address of an inputted downstream data packet corresponds to a multicast group address of the received multicast packet using an ethernet MAC destination address of the inputted downstream data packet; composing a multicast session search character string using an ethernet MAC address denoting a receiving group address of the inputted downstream data packet (GMAC address) and an ethernet MAC address denoting a transmission address (SMAC address); searching multicast session lookup tables to verify whether multicast session information exists; acquiring the start address of a multicast service flow information; searching for service flow information using the start address of the acquired service flow information; composing an internal header in a front portion of the inputted downstream data packet comprising multicast service flow information allocated to a session when the multicast session information about the inputted downstream data packet exists; and composing a multicast MAC packet based on the internal header; and outputting the received multicast MAC packet comprising the composed internal header.