Method for providing summary information about recipients of IP multicast sessions

A method is provided for providing content providers with specific information about recipients receiving a multicast session, which minimally impacts applicable standards and network equipment. By judicious enhancement of the network POP (i.e., Point-of-Presence) and multicast packet header (i.e., datagram) enhancement, the identity of a recipient or host may be identified in a suitable manner that provides the content provider with information about the recipients as a group with out compromising the privacy of any individual host/recipient of a multicast session.