MEDIA NETWORKS

Multicast

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UNICAST

• content is sent from one device to another with a one-

to-one connection
• When a client is connecting to a media server using
unicast, it creates a direct relationship between the
client and the server. Each individual relationship with
the server takes up additional bandwidth

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MULTICAST
• multiple viewers are allowed to simultaneously connect to one stream or
source in a one-to-many connection
• The multicast source relies on the multicast routers to forward the
stream to all client subnets that have clients listening
• Viewers can attach to the same stream at different points during the
live stream
• delivering a single stream of information simultaneously to potentially
thousands of businesses and homes.
• video conferencing, video streaming, computer imaging, Music on hold
services, sensor updates, webcasts, Software updates, …

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MULTICAST APPLICATIONS
• One-to-Many Multicast
− Most common
• Video streaming
• Os deployment
• NTP
• Many-to-Many Multicast
− Senders also act as receivers
• Video conferencing
• Document and whiteboard sharing
• Many-to-One Multicast
− Not common, no significant improvement over unicast
• Data collection

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MULTICAST IN THE OSI MODEL

• IP Multicasting supports UDP as higher layer

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MULTICAST SOURCES

• A source is a device in the IP network that sends a

packet to a multicast group IP Address
• A source does not have to send any indication on the
network that it wants to become a source
• A router processing a multicast message creates an (S,
G) (= source comma group)entry

239.0.0.1

192.168.0.10 (S, G) = (192.168.0.10,239.0.0.1)

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MULTICAST RECEIVERS

• A receiver is a device in the IP network that has

expressed interest in a particular multicast group
or specific (S, G)
• The multicast receiver listens to all packets that arrive
with the multicast group address as the destination
address
• The subscription is managed by
− Internet Group Messaging Protocol (IGMP) - IPv4
− Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) – IPv6

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MULTICAST IPV4 ADDRESSES

• IPv4 Class D address space

• range 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255
• Multicast address can only be destination address in IP
header

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RESERVED LINK-LOCAL ADDRESSES
• 224.0.0.0 to 224.0.0.255
• Local network control
• network protocols on a local network
segment
• typically sent with a time-to-live (TTL)
value of 1 and are not forwarded by a
router

• E.g. Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)

uses the IP addresses 224.0.0.5 and
224.0.0.6 to exchange link-state
information

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GLOBALLY SCOPED ADDRESSES

• 224.0.1.0 to 238.255.255.255

• send multicast data between organizations across the

Internet

• E.g. the IP address 224.0.1.1 is reserved for Network

Time Protocol (NTP)

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LIMITED SCOPE ADDRESSES

• 239.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255

• administratively or limited scoped addresses for use in

private multicast domains
• local multicast applications that will not be forwarded
outside a domain

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MULTICAST IPV6 ADDRESSES

• Prefix of FF00::/8 (first octet from FF00 to FFFF)

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WELL KNOWN MULTICAST ADDRESSES

• Reserved addresses

Address Listeners
FF02::1 All nodes on subnet
FF02::2 All routers on subnet
FF02::5 OSPFv3 routers on subnet
FF02::A EIGRP routers on subnet
FF05::1:3 All DHCP servers on site

FF02::1:FFXX:XXXX Solicited-Node

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TRANSIENT MULTICAST (DYNAMIC
MULTICAST)
• FF10::/12 address range
• Used as temporary multicast addresses by applications
− Audio/Video streaming
− Video Conferencing
− OS deployment

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HARDWARE/ETHERNET MULTICASTING
• the network card is configured, via its drivers, to watch out for particular
MAC addresses: multicast MAC addresses
• Ethernet uses the low-order bit of the high-order octet to distinguish
conventional unicast addresses from multicast addresses. A unicast
would have this bit set to ZERO (0), whereas a multicast would be set
to ONE (1)
• When a normal (unicast) packet is put on the network by a computer, it
contains the Source and Destination MAC address
• a multicast packet is not directed to one host but a number of hosts, so
the destination MAC address will not match the unique MAC address of
any computer
• you will never find a source address that is a multicast MAC address, the
source address will always be a real one, to identify which computer the
packet came from.

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RECOGNIZE A MULTICAST MAC ADDRESS

Unicast MAC multicast MAC

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MAPPING IP MULTICAST TO ETHERNET
MULTICAST IPV4
• place the low-order 23 bits of
the IP multicast address into the
low-order 23 bits of the special
Ethernet multicast address. The
rest of the high-order bits are
defined by the IEEE (yellow
color in the example)
• It is possible for multiple IP
Multicast addresses to have the
same MAC Multicast address
− All frames with the correct MAC
address will be de-encapsulated and
send to the upper layer, which will
drop the packets to which the device
is not subscribed

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MAPPING IP MULTICAST TO ETHERNET
MULTICAST IPV6
• the most significant 16 bits
of an IPv6 multicast MAC
address are 0x3333. The
least significant 32 bits are
mapped from the least
significant 32 bits of an IPv6
multicast address
• the problem of duplicate
IPv6-to-MAC address
mapping also arises like
IPv4-to-MAC address
mapping

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MULTICAST ON THE LINK-LOCAL NETWORK

• MAC address table is filled by storing the source MAC

addresses from incoming frames
• Multicast address is never the source MAC
• Multicast frames will be flooded to all ports

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MULTICAST AND LAYER-2 SWITCHES
• When multicasting with Layer 2 switches, all
attached devices receive the packets,
whether they want them or not.
• Because a multicast header does NOT have a
destination IP address, an average network
switch (a Layer 2 switch without supported receiver
capabilities) will not know what to do with it.
So the switch sends the packet out to every
network port on all attached devices. When
the client or network interface card (NIC) source
receives the packet, it analyzes the
destination MAC address and discards it if
not wanted.
receiver

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• Switches and routers need to be aware of devices on the
network interested in a specific multicast stream
• Without this, the only option is to flood the frames on
the local network
• Host group membership is a dynamic process
− Hosts can join a multicast group
− Hosts can leave a multicast group

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MULTICAST GROUP MEMBERSHIP
DISCOVERY (MGMD) PROTOCOLS
• Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP)
− IPv4
• Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD)
− IPv6

• IGMPv1
• IGMPv2 = MLDv1
• IGMPv3 = MLDv2

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• receivers indicate their interest by sending an IGMP/MLD host
report to the gateway router (called the querier) per segment
• The routers use Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) to
dynamically create a multicast distribution tree
• The data stream will then be delivered only to the network
segments that are in the path between the source and the
receivers

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IGMP
• Router periodically broadcasts IGMP/MLD Query messages
onto the link.
• Hosts respond to the Query messages by sending IGMP/MLD
Report messages indicating their group memberships.
• All routers receive the Report messages and note the
memberships of hosts on the link.
• If a router doesn't receive a Report message for a particular
group for a period of time, the router assumes there are no more
members of the group on the link.

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IGMP AND PIM

• Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) is used

between hosts on a LAN and the routers on that LAN to
track the multicast groups of which hosts are members.
• Protocol Independent Multicast(PIM) is used between
routers so that they can track which multicast packets to
forward to each other and to their directly connected
LANs.

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IGMP V1
• IGMP v1
No mechanism to leave a group
− Queries
• Querier sends IGMP query messages to 224.0.0.1 (all hosts on the network) with
ttl = 1
• One router on LAN is designated/elected (highest IP address) to send queries =
querier
» There is no election process in IGMPv1, it depends on PIM for the election
• Query interval 60–120 seconds
− Reports
• IGMP report sent by one host suppresses sending by others
• Restrict to one report per group per LAN
• Unsolicited reports sent by host, when it first joins the group

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IGMP - JOINING A GROUP

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IGMP V2

• IGMP v2:
− Host sends leave message if it leaves the group and is the last member (reduces
leave latency and unneeded traffic in comparison to v1)
− Router sends Group-specific queries to make sure there are no members present
before stopping to forward data for the group for that subnet
− Standard querier election (no longer relies on PIM)
• Every router querier by default
• 2 queriers on one link
» Lowest ip becomes querier → Sending IGMP query reports
» Highest ip becomes Designated router → Sending PIM messages

− A query message contains a Maximum Response Time (MRT)

• Group members receiving a query start the timer at a random value, when no other host has sent a
membership report, the host will send the report → only one host on the network needs to send the report

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IGMP MEMBERSHIP QUERY

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IGMP MEMBERSHIP REPORT

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IGMP V2—LEAVING A GROUP

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IGMP LEAVE GROUP

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IGMP V3

• IGMP v3:
− packing multiple group memberships in a single Report message to reduce
the number of packets sent
− Enables to listen only to a specified subset of the hosts sending to the group
• Source Specific Multicast

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IGMP (IPV4) ROUTER CONFIGURATION

• Router(config)#ip multicast-routing

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MULTICAST LISTENER DISCOVERY (MLD)

• MLD is used by IPv6 devices to discover multicast listeners

on directly connected links
• A querier is a network device that sends query messages to
discover which network devices are members of a given
multicast group
• A host is a receiver that send report messages to inform the
querier of a host membership
• MLD reports to join and leave multicast groups
• MLD reports are ICMPv6 with link-local addresses with
hop limit of 1

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MLD LISTENER REPORT

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MLD MULTICAST LISTENER QUERY

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MLD LEAVE GROUP

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MLD ROUTER CONFIGURATION

• Router(config)#ipv6 multicast-routing

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SWITCH IGMP AND MLD SNOOPING

• Switch listens to IGMP and MLD listener reports to know

who wants to receive the multicast packet and who
doesn’t
• When a receiving device wants to tap into a multicasting
stream, it responds to the multicast broadcast with an
IGMP or MLD listener report

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CONFIGURING IGMP SNOOPING

• Switch(config)#ip igmp snooping

• Switch(config)#ip igmp snooping vlan 1
• Switch(config)#ipv6 mld snooping
• Switch(config)#ipv6 mld snooping vlan 1

• Switch#show ip igmp snooping mrouter

• Switch#show ip igmp snooping groups

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ANY SOURCE MULTICAST (ASM)

• host can use any version of IGMP or MLD to join a

multicast group (G)
• The network will deliver IP multicast packets from any
source host with the destination address G to all receiver
hosts in the network that have joined group G.
• an ASM group should only be used by a single
application

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SOURCE SPECIFIC MULTICAST (SSM)

• IP multicast receiver host must use IGMP Version 3

(IGMPv3) or MLDv2 to subscribe to channel (S,G)
• receiver host is indicating that it wants to receive IP
multicast traffic sent by source host S to group G
• network will deliver IP multicast packets from source
host S to group G to all hosts in the network that have
subscribed to the channel (S, G)
• SSM does not require group address allocation within the
network, only within each source host

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MULTICAST ROUTING PROTOCOL

• Deliver multicast packets to their destination over a

layer-3 network = deliver the packets to all the group
members on the network
• Packets can be replicated by routers to multiple outgoing
interfaces
• Routers will need to send information about group
membership

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REVERSE PATH FORWARDING TREE
• Unicast routing build network trees based on destination
− Forwarding decisions are based on the destination address
− Routing table contains learned networks with their exit interface
• Multicast builds a reverse path forwarding tree
− Forward packets based on where the source is
− The root of the distribution tree is the router connected to the sources network
− In the network, incoming multicast packets will not be accepted/forwarded unless they
are received on an interface that is the outgoing interface for the unicast route to the
source of the packet

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PROTOCOL INDEPENDENT MULTICAST
(PIM)
• Multicast routing protocol for IPv4 and IPv6
• PIM uses unicast routing information from routing protocols (no
static routes) to perform the multicast forwarding function
• uses the unicast routing table to perform the reverse path forwarding
(RPF) check function instead of building up a completely independent
multicast routing table
• PIM does not send and receive routing updates between routers

• Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Border Gateway
Protocol (BGP)

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PIM MESSAGES

• Hello: Discovering neighbors

• Join: When a host joins a group by sending an IGMP
report, the router uses a PIM Join message to join the
group network tree
• Leave and prune: When a host leaves a group by
sending an IGMP leave, and no other hosts are a
member of the group, the router uses a PIM Prune
message to leave the group network tree

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JOIN/PRUNE MESSAGE

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PIM DENSE MODE
• Multicast packets are flooded throughout the network
• Routers that have upstream devices listening to the
multicast send a PIM Leave message to stop the
upstream router from sending the multicast packets
• Every 3 minutes, the network is flooded and pruned again
• Push model for building trees
• A router can send a PIM join message to receive a
multicast
• Each router maintains its own trees

• Easy to configure
• For small networks with fast links

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PIM SPARSE MODE
• Uses the IP routing table to build the tree to
the source of a multicast
• Each group has a Rendezvois point
• Routers send periodic join/prune messages
to the RP for each group it has members
• The RP acts as the meeting place for the 1: Multicast to RP

sources and receivers

• Sources send their traffic to the RP, the RP
forwards it to the receivers 3: Multicast from RP

• By default, when the last router in the tree

receives the multicast packet, it will check if 5: Multicast to receiver
the source is in the routers unicast routing 2: join

table. If so, it will send a join message

directly to the source, creating a shorter 4: join

path

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CONFIGURING PIM DENSE MODE

• Router(config)#ip multicast-routing  igmp

• Router(config-if)#ip pim dense-mode

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• Router(config-if)#ip pim sparse-mode
• Router(config)#ip pim rp-address <ipv4-address>

• Router(config)#ipv6 multicast-routing
• →enables MLD and PIM on router
• Router(config)#ipv6 pim rp-address <ipv6-address>

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SHOW COMMANDS

• Show ip mroute
• Show ip pim interface
• Show ip pim neighbors
• Show ip igmp groups

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