nodes in a troip conference can receive each packet as a single broadcast message rather than n 1 messages for a network of n radios using unicast this is intended to decrease the data load on each node and to decrease spectrum use across the network versus a unicast model the problem is that the rebroadcasting done at each node results in interference and decreased performance this invention dubbed tactical multicast was designed to mitigate this issue fig3 illustrates the basic control and data flow of the system 300 according to the preferred embodiment rather than rebroadcast by flooding the system tries to ensure that packets are retransmitted only when needed each node running tactical multicast will run a local tally of neighboring nodes peers tracking and compiling various quality parameters associated with each peer at regular events 302 the system will acknowledge received packets 304 if they exist if there are no new packets to process the system will check 306 for important updates in the local best node link list 314 the list of peers is not sent immediately in response to network changes there is some hysteresis on this when a node detects 306 that a peer now has a good quality link or that a peer has lost all of its good quality links the node waits 308 a configurable amount of time a random adjustment to send a new list if further changes happen before the list is sent nothing more needs to happen when the time comes to send the message the list is.