US 2014/0233446 A1Published application

Wireless multicast proxy

AssigneeMarvell World Trade Ltd.

InventorsRobert Fanfelle, Raja Banerjea

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Abstract

An access point including a snoop circuit to generate a table including a plurality of entries, each entry associating a MAC address of a wireless client with a multicast IP address; to enable multicast traffic for a first wireless client in response to receiving a first message from the first wireless client by i) adding an entry to the table for the first wireless client in response to the entry not existing in the table, and ii) starting a timeout timer for the first wireless client, or by restarting the timeout timer in response to the entry for the first wireless client existing in the table; and to keep the multicast traffic for the first wireless client enabled as long as the timeout timer is reset before expiring. An output circuit transmits a packet to the first wireless client if the multicast traffic for the first wireless client is enabled.

Claims14

Dependent claims

An access point comprising:

a snoop circuit configured to
generate a table including a plurality of entries corresponding to a plurality of wireless clients, wherein each entry in the table associates a MAC address of the corresponding wireless client with a multicast IP address;
enable multicast traffic for a first wireless client of the plurality of wireless clients in response to receiving a first message from the first wireless client by
i) adding an entry to the table for the first wireless client in response to the entry not existing in the table, and ii) starting a timeout timer for the first wireless client, or
restarting the timeout timer in response to the entry for the first wireless client existing in the table;
keep the multicast traffic for the first wireless client enabled as long as the timeout timer is reset before expiring;
and
an output circuit configured to transmit a packet of data to the first wireless client in response to (i) the multicast traffic for the first wireless client being enabled, and (ii) the packet of data being a multicast packet including the multicast IP address associated with the first wireless client in the entry in the table.

5 more elements

A method comprising:

generating, at an access point, a table including a plurality of entries corresponding to a plurality of wireless clients, wherein each entry in the table associates a MAC address of the corresponding wireless client with a multicast IP address;
enabling multicast traffic for a first wireless client of the plurality of wireless clients in response to receiving a first message from the first wireless client by
i) adding an entry to the table for the first wireless client in response to the entry not existing in the table, and ii) starting a timeout timer for the first wireless client, or
restarting the timeout timer in response to the entry for the first wireless client existing in the table;
keeping the multicast traffic for the first wireless client enabled as long as the timeout timer is reset before expiring;
and
transmitting a packet of data to the first wireless client in response to (i) the multicast traffic for the first wireless client being enabled, and (ii) the packet of data being a multicast packet including the multicast IP address associated with the first wireless client in the entry in the table.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.