MULTICAST COMMUNICATION METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR RECEIVING AND FORWARDING DATA VIA A NETWORK AMONG A PLURALITY OF NODES

摘要

A multicast communication apparatus for receiving and forwarding data via a network among a plurality of nodes. The apparatus has: a receiving section that receives the data from a source node; a routing table that stores route information of the data including the source node and a destination node of the data; a forwarding section that forwards the data to a next destination node according to the route information of the routing table; a hop length table that includes a hopping number of the data forwarded from the source node to the next destination node; and a mixing processing section that performs mixing processing of data received from another node. The mixing processing section performs the mixing processing according to the hopping number in the hop length table.