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Multicast

23.1 Multicast Overview

This chapter shows you how to configure various multicast features.

Traditionally, IP packets are transmitted in one of either two ways - Unicast (1 sender to 1 recipient) or Broadcast (1 sender to everybody on the network). Multicast delivers IP packets to just a group of hosts on the network.

IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) is a network-layer protocol used to establish membership in a multicast group - it is not used to carry user data. Refer to RFC 1112, RFC 2236 and RFC 3376 for information on IGMP versions 1, 2 and 3 respectively.

23.1.1What You Can Do

Use the Multicast Setup screen (Section 23.2 on page 172) to enable IGMP snooping to forward group multicast traffic only to ports that are members of that group.

Use the IPv4 Multicast Status screen (Section 23.3 on page 172) to view multicast group information.

Use the IPv6 Multicast Status screen (Section 23.5 on page 178) to view multicast group information,

Use the MLD Snooping-proxyscreen (Section 23.5.1 on page 179) to enable the upstream port to report group changes to a connected multicast router and forward MLD messages to other upstream ports. See Section 23.1 on page 168 for more information on multicasting

Use the MVR screens (Section 23.6 on page 186) to create multicast VLANs and select the receiver port(s) and a source port for each multicast VLAN.

23.1.2What You Need to Know

Read on for concepts on Multicasting that can help you configure the screens in this chapter.

IP Multicast Addresses

In IPv4, a multicast address allows a device to send packets to a specific group of hosts (multicast group) in a different subnetwork. A multicast IP address represents a traffic receiving group, not individual receiving devices. IP addresses in the Class D range (224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255) are used for IP multicasting. Certain IP multicast numbers are reserved by IANA for special purposes (see the IANA website for more information).

IGMP Snooping

A Switch can passively snoop on IGMP packets transferred between IP multicast routers/switches and IP multicast hosts to learn the IP multicast group membership. It checks IGMP packets passing

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