| 摘要 |
In a distributed switch (110, fig .1) having an Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) or Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) snooper 208 with a Global Forwarding Table 209, multicast entries to the table trigger a timer (506, fig. 5) after which their hit status (524, 528) is checked to determine whether a switch forwarding unit (eg. 220) has forwarded the multicast data to the host membership of the multicast destination address 222, and the entry cast out of the table if not. This prevents unnecessary filling of the table and flooding of the network with multicasts. Each forwarding unit may also generate a miss event (314 eg. an interrupt) when it has a need to know the multicast membership information of a multicast destination address. |
