Patent ID: 7986702

Claim:
A method for a customer-premises equipment (CPE) gateway, the method comprising: receiving, by the CPE gateway, a first Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) compliant command; generating by the CPE gateway, in response to the first IGMP compliant command, a unicast command that instructs a multimedia server to generate a unicast media stream; wherein the generating comprises concealing multicast information from at least one IGMP compliant entity that follows the CPE gateway; and transmitting, by the CPE gateway, the unicast command to the at least one IGMP compliant entity; wherein the unicast command passes through the at least one IGMP compliant entity and reaches the multimedia server; wherein the receiving of the first compliant IGMP compliant command comprises receiving the first IGMP compliant command that pertains to a switching from a first multicast media stream to a second multicast media stream; wherein the method further comprises: receiving, by the CPE gateway, a unicast media stream that is generated by the multimedia server in response to the unicast request information and to the second multicast media stream; and receiving an instruction to switch from the unicast media stream to the second multicast media stream, wherein the instruction comprises timing information.