Multicast communications have grown increasingly important and complex in networking architectures. Multicasting generally refers to a scenario in which multicast packets are routed to multiple destinations and generally replicated an appropriate number of times. Each particle of a multicast packet generally includes a reference count, which offers some information about the number of intended targets for the data. As a particle is created an element may operate to set the reference count, whereby once the particle's reference count reaches ‘0’ it is generally freed by the system. When a target identifies itself as ready to receive a portion of data, the data needs to be accessed and read from a memory location. In some environments, a problem is presented when a multicast packet or a data segment is stored in some memory unit and then recalled by multiple targets simultaneously. This may also present a problem in cases where the target does not yet know the correct value of the reference count or what other potential targets may also be attempting to access the data. The time interval required to adequately modify the reference count must be kept to a minimum, as such an operation generally inhibits system speed.
In cases where the target opts to wait to receive the data before modifying the reference count, another target may also access the data concurrently and thus retrieve an invalid reference count. In addition, other problems may be presented where the modified reference count is corrupted when written back to the memory unit by either the first target seeking access to the data or a subsequent target. These problems may result in corrupted data segments, inferior data communication speeds, inefficient uses of networking resources, and poor performance characteristics for associated multicasting operations.