Patent attributes
An API enables an application to make a single call for a send operation to an operating system that results in a multicast communication. The API may provide the ability to define a socket group including one or more sockets, in which each socket represents a respective network connection to another network device. An application may utilize the socket group when calling to the operating system with a send operation, by specifying an identifier (i.e., a handle) of the socket group to the operating system. Based on the socket group identifier, the operating system may control sending multiple instances of a communication to the network devices corresponding to the connections represented by the sockets of the socket group. Tasks that are repeated for every destination of a multicast in known systems may be performed only once, reducing CPU utilization and making applications that use multicasting more scalable.
