Multicast packet replication

A device comprising:

• a set of router interfaces;
• a set of packet replicators, wherein the packet replicators are distributed across multiple ones of the router interfaces;
• and
• a hierarchical data structure that represents a hierarchical relationship of the packet replicators distributed across the multiple interfaces in the device, wherein the hierarchical data structure is generated by determining a starting entry of a first multicast list of a plurality of multicast lists based on at least an index number of the first multicast list from a data structure that maintains the plurality of multicast lists, populating a base node of the hierarchical data structure with one of the packet replicators associated with the determined starting entry of the first multicast list, and populating the hierarchical data structure with the respective packet replicators associated with ascending entries of the first multicast list,
• further wherein each of the packet replicators replicates a multicast packets according to the hierarchical data structure.

A method comprising:

• identifying a set of interfaces of a network router involved in a one-to-many communication session from a first list of a plurality of lists;
• identifying packet replicators associated with the identified interfaces, wherein the packet replicators are distributed across multiple ones of the interfaces;
• generating a data structure that represents a hierarchical relationship of packet replicators distributed across the multiple interfaces in the network router by determining a starting entry of the first list based on at least an index number of the first list from a data structure that maintains the plurality of lists, populating a base node of the hierarchical data structure with one of the packet replicators associated with the determined starting entry of the first list, and populating the hierarchical data structure with the respective packet replicators associated with ascending entries of the first list;
• and
• replicating a one-to-many communication packet using the packet replicators associated with the interfaces in accordance with the hierarchical data structure.

A method comprising:

• receiving a first multicast list of a plurality of multicast lists that identifies interface cards involved in a multicast session;
• deriving a list of packet-forwarding engines involved in the multicast session from the first multicast list, wherein each of the packet-forwarding engines is associated with one or more of the interface cards;
• and
• generating a hierarchical data structure based on the packet-forwarding engine list by determining a starting entry of the packet-forwarding engine list based on at least an index number of the first multicast list from a data structure that maintains the plurality of multicast lists, populating a base node of the hierarchical data structure with one of the packet-forwarding engines associated with the determined starting entry, and populating the hierarchical data structure with the respective packet-forwarding engines associated with ascending entries of the packet-forwarding engine list;
• replicating multicast packets within the packet-forwarding engines in accordance with the hierarchical data structure.

A method comprising:

• receiving a first multicast list of a plurality of multicast lists;
• determining a starting entry of the first multicast list based on at least an index number of the first multicast list from a data structure that maintains the plurality of multicast lists;
• populating a base node of a hierarchical data structure with one of a plurality of packet replicators corresponding to the determined starting entry of the first multicast list;
• populating the hierarchical data structure horizontally with ascending entries of the first multicast list;
• and
• replicating packets using packet replicators associated with the router interfaces according to the hierarchical data structure.

A system comprising:

• a source host that sends a multicast packet;
• a plurality of destination hosts that receive a copy of the multicast packet;
• and
• a router that replicates the multicast packets using packet replicators distributed across multiple interfaces in the router according to a hierarchical data structure, wherein the hierarchical data structure is generated by determining a starting entry of a first multicast list of a plurality of multicast lists based on at least an index number of the first multicast list from a data structure that maintains the plurality of multicast lists, populating a base node of the hierarchical data structure with one of the packet replicators associated with the determined starting entry of the first multicast list, and populating the hierarchical data structure with the respective packet replicators associated with ascending entries of the first multicast list.

A computer-readable medium comprising instructions to cause a processor to:

• identify a set of interfaces of a network router from a first multicast list of a plurality of multicast lists;
• identify packet replicators associated with the identified interfaces, wherein the packet replicators are distributed across multiple ones of the interfaces;
• generate a hierarchical data structure that represents a hierarchical relationship of packet replicators distributed across the multiple interfaces in the network router by determining a starting entry of the first multicast list based on at least an index number of the first multicast list from a data structure that maintains the plurality of multicast lists, populating a base node of the hierarchical data structure with one of the packet replicators associated with the determined starting entry of the first multicast list, and populating the hierarchical data structure with the respective packet replicators associated with ascending entries of the first multicast list;
• and
• replicate a multicast packets in the packet replicators according to the hierarchical data structure.