This section describes the background of multicast, multicast advantages, and actual multicast applications. Multicast implements efficient point-to-multipoint (P2MP) data transmission on IP networks. It saves network bandwidth and reduces network loads. Multicast is widely used in IPTV, real-time data transmission, and multimedia conferences services.
This section describes the basic concept, basic architecture, multicast address, multicast protocol, multicast model classification, and multicast packet forwarding.
Configuring IGMP on the interface that connects a multicast device to the user network segment implements the management of group members on the local network.
The PIM protocol is used to implement multicast routing and data forwarding inside an AS. The PIM-DM protocol is a multicast routing protocol of dense node. It is applicable to a small-scale network with densely-distributed members.
The PIM protocol is used to implement multicast routing and data forwarding inside an AS. The PIM-SM protocol is a multicast routing protocol of sparse node. It is applicable to a large-scale network with sparsely-distributed members.
The Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) protocol is used to implement multicast routing and data forwarding between PIM-SM domains and anycast Rendezvous Point (RP) in a PIM-SM domain.
The system synchronously maintains multiple multicast routing protocols, and controls multicast routing and forwarding through the information exchanged between the control plane and the forwarding plane.