System and methods for confining multicast routing trees to within single
zones of a multi-zone communication systems, thereby enabling faster convergence
of the trees relative to trees spanning multiple zones. Separate multicast routing
trees are established using different multicast addresses in a source zone and
one or more listening zones. Packets for a call distributed by routers (104,
116) of a packet network within the source zone via a source zone multicast
address are received by a source zone packet duplicator (132). The source
zone packet duplicator forwards the packets, via routers (116, 118, 120, 122)
of the packet network using unicast routing, to various listening zone packet duplicators
(136, 138). The listening zone packet duplicators, upon receiving the packets,
separately distribute the packets within their respective zones via the packet
network using different multicast addresses of the listening zones. The source
zone and listening zones may be redefined during the call as the source changes
or moves to different zones.