Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation

Ryuma Senoo

Ken Takahashi

Shigemasa Kumagawa

There is provided route control with excellent flexibility even in a large-scale multicast transfer system. A multicast transfer system transfers a multicast packet arriving at a plurality of destinations between multicast communication devices, and a packet transfer processing unitof the multicast communication devicetransfers, when an interface of a multicast communication deviceadjacent to itself is specified as a transfer destination of a received multicast packet, the multicast packet to the specified interface, and transfers, when the interface of the multicast communication deviceadjacent to itself is not specified as the transfer destination of the received multicast packet, the multicast packet to an interface to a multicast communication devicespecified as the destination.

Communication device, multicast transfer system, and multicast transfer method

Implementations are directed to performing path switching quickly and efficiently when path switching is required in a multicast transfer system. In a multicast transfer system, a multicast group for transmitting the same packet from a sender (transmitting apparatus) to a plurality of receivers (receiving apparatuses) is formed. A transfer apparatus holds transfer destination data in which a group identifier for identifying a multicast group is associated with copy transfer destination information (multicast segment) for specifying another transfer apparatus to be used as a packet transfer destination when the packet is received. In copy transfer destination information, a plurality of other transfer apparatuses can be registered by adding a priority, and a plurality of group identifiers can be associated with a single piece of copy transfer destination information.

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Musashino, Japan

Ryuma Senoo