SYSTEM AND METHOD THAT ROUTES FLOWS VIA MULTICAST FLOW TRANSPORT FOR GROUPS

摘要

A routing system and method for flows within a network provides multicast flow transport for one or more groups. Transit routers comprising processing units that run overlay processes route one or more flows based on overlay group identifiers. Access nodes issue requests for overlay groups in order to receive flows from the transit routers. The overlay processes utilize a mapping service that maps overlay group identifiers to native multicast group identifiers. A control channel between the access nodes and transit routers is used for communicating access nodes requests, overlay group identifiers, and native multicast group identifiers.