D
ESCRIPTION
OF
S
OFTWARE
F
EATURES
1-9
Multicast Routing – Routing for multicast packets is supported by the
Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol (DVMRP) and
Protocol-Independent Multicasting - Dense Mode (PIM-DM). These
protocols work in conjunction with IGMP to filter and route multicast
traffic. DVMRP is a more comprehensive implementation that maintains
its own routing table, but is gradually being replacing by most network
managers with PIM, Dense Mode and Sparse Mode. PIM is a very simple
protocol that uses the routing table of the unicast routing pro tocol enabled
on an interface. Dense Mode is designed for areas where the probability of
multicast clients is relatively high, and the overhead of frequent flooding is
justified. While Sparse mode is designed for network areas, such as the
Wide Area Network, where the probability of multicast clients is low. This
switch currently supports DVMRP and PIM-DM.