| 摘要 |
<p>An interface module (30A, 30B) of a Passive Optical Network (PON) maintains information associating Class-D Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for multicast streams with Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) Virtual Circuit Channels (VCCs), and with nodes (28A, 28B, 28C, 28D) of the PON that have requested the multicast streams. When an interface module (30A, 30B) receives a first request for a multicast stream, it will associate a VCC and the requesting node (28A, 28B, 28C, 28D) with Class-D IP address of the stream and deliver the stream on the associated VCC. The interface module (30A, 30B) may periodically deliver map packets to nodes (28A, 28B, 28C, 28D) to indicate the current Class-D IP to VCC mappings, and subsequent requesting nodes (28A, 28B, 28C, 28D) may obtain the stream by referring to the map packet. The interface module (30A, 30B) deletes the association of a node (28A, 28B, 28C, 28D) with a stream when it receives a disassociation request from the node (28A, 28B, 28C, 28D) , and delivers the stream on the associated VCC so long as any node (28A, 28B, 28C, 28D) is associated with the stream.</p> |
