Cisco Systems 78-11741-02 manual Benefits, IP Multicast Address Management Not Required, IPC-464

Configuring Source Specific Multicast

Benefits

Because the router returns a Content-Type of text and HTML, the best way to include the URD intercept URL into a web page is to use a frame. By defining the size of the frame, you can also hide the URD intercept URL on the displayed page.

By default, URD is disabled on all interfaces. When URD is configured through the ip urd interface configuration command on an interface, it will be active only for IP multicast addresses in the SSM range.

Benefits

IP Multicast Address Management Not Required

In the ISM service, applications must acquire a unique IP multicast group address because traffic distribution is based only on the IP multicast group address used. If two applications with different sources and receivers use the same IP multicast group address, then receivers of both applications will receive traffic from the senders of both applications. Even though the receivers, if programmed appropriately, can filter out the unwanted traffic, this situation would cause generally unacceptable levels of unwanted traffic.

Allocating a unique IP multicast group address for an application is still a problem. Most short-lived applications use mechanisms like Session Description Protocol (SDP) and Session Announcement Protocol (SAP) to get a random address, a solution that does not work well with a rising number of applications in the Internet. The best current solution for long-lived applications is described in RFC 2770, but this solution suffers from the restriction that each autonomous system is limited to only 255 usable IP multicast addresses.

In SSM, traffic from each source is forwarded between routers in the network independent of traffic from other sources. Thus different sources can reuse multicast group addresses in the SSM range.

Denial of Service Attacks from Unwanted Sources Inhibited

In SSM, multicast traffic from each individual source will be transported across the network only if it was requested (through IGMPv3, IGMP v3lite, or URD memberships) from a receiver. In contrast, ISM forwards traffic from any active source sending to a multicast group to all receivers requesting that multicast group. In Internet broadcast applications, this ISM behavior is highly undesirable because it allows unwanted sources to easily disturb the actual Internet broadcast source by simply sending traffic to the same multicast group. This situation depletes bandwidth at the receiver side with unwanted traffic and thus disrupts the undisturbed reception of the Internet broadcast. In SSM, this type of denial of service (DoS) attack cannot be made by simply sending traffic to a multicast group.

Easy to Install and Manage

SSM is easy to install and provision in a network because it does not require the network to maintain which active sources are sending to multicast groups. This requirement exists in ISM (with IGMPv1, IGMPv2, or IGMPv3).

The current standard solutions for ISM service are PIM-SM and MSDP. Rendezvous point (RP) management in PIM-SM (including the necessity for Auto-RP or BSR) and MSDP is required only for the network to learn about active sources. This management is not necessary in SSM, which makes SSM easier than ISM to install and manage, and therefore easier than ISM to operationally scale in

Cisco IOS IP Configuration Guide

IPC-464