US Patent 7864750 Load distributing apparatus and load distributing method

A load distributing apparatus is connected to a plurality of routers carrying out a transfer process of multicast data. The load distributing apparatus includes a network interface unit that receives a packet via a network, a packet identifying unit that identifies the packet received as a join message or a prune message, a path-sorting-rule storing unit that stores a path-sorting rule for sorting the packet to the routers, and a packet sorting unit that sorts the packet that is identified by the packet identifying unit to the routers based on the path-sorting rule stored in the path-sorting-rule storing unit.