Patent 7580368 was granted and assigned to Panasonic on August, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A packet distribution control method in the case of performing multicast communication in network environment where both networks that support IP multicast and that do not support IP multicast exist. In packet distribution in multicast communication, each end node checks mutually whether or not other end nodes are capable of communicating in IP multicast. Then, each end node uses IP unicast in packet distribution to other end nodes not capable of communicating only in IP multicast.