US Patent 7127610 Apparatus and method of implementing multicast security between multicast domains

An apparatus and method of implementing multicast security in a given multicast domain, the given multicast domain having one or more network devices, receives multicast traffic that is encrypted with a global key, the global key being available to the given multicast domain and one or more other multicast domains, decrypts the received multicast traffic with the global key to produce decrypted multicast traffic, encrypts the decrypted multicast traffic with a local key to produce local encrypted multicast traffic, the local key being available to the given multicast domain, and forwards the local encrypted multicast traffic to the one or more network devices in the given multicast domain. In a further embodiment, the apparatus and method for implementing multicast security in a given multicast domain first receives a global key message that identifies the global key.