Chapter 21 Multicast Routing Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Chapter 21: Outline 221.1 INTRODUCTION 221.2 MULTICAST BASICS 221.3 INTRADOMAIN MULTICAST PROTOCOL 221.3 INTERDOMAIN MULTICAST PROTOCOL 221.5 IGMP 21.#

Chapter 21: Objective The first section introduces the concept of multicasting and compares unicasting and multicasting. The section also explains the differences between multicasting and multiple unicasting. Finally, the section gives some applications of multicasting. The second section gives some information about the basics of multicasting. The section first elaborates on multicast addresses. The section shows how network layer multicast addresses are mapped to data-link layer multicast addresses. The section then describes how collection of information to be used for forwarding is done differently in unicasting and multicasting. The section finally describes the process of multicast forwarding and two approaches in multicasting. 21.#

Chapter 21: Objective (continued( The third section discusses intradomain multicast routing protocols. The section first describes DVMRP. It then explains MOSPF. The section ends with the discussion of PIM. The fourth section briefly discusses some interdomain multicast routing protocols. Briefly shown are the roles of two protocols: MGBP and BGMP. The fifth section discusses IGMP, a protocol responsible for collecting information for multicast routers. The section first describes IGMP messages. It then shows how the protocol is applied to a host and a router. It finally shows the role of IGMP in forwarding multicast packets. 21.#

21-1 INTRODUCTION Communication in the Internet today is not only unicasting; multicasting communication is growing fast. In this section, we first discuss the general ideas behind unicasting, multicasting, and broadcasting. We then talk about some basic issues in multicast routing. Finally, we discuss multicasting routing protocols in the Internet. 21.#

221.21.1 Unicasting In unicasting, there is one source and one destination network. The relationship between the source and the destination network is one to one. Each router in the path of the datagram tries to forward the packet to one and only one of its interfaces. 21.#

Figure 221.1: Unicasting 21.#

20.21.2 Multicasting In multicasting, there is one source and a group of destinations. The relationship is one to many. In this type of communication, the source address is a unicast address, but the destination address is a group address, a group of one or more destination networks in which there is at least one member of the group that is interested in receiving the multicast datagram. The group address defines the members of the group. 21.#

Figure 221.2: Multicasting 21.#

Figure 221.3: Multicasting versus multiple unicasting 21.#

20.21.3 Broadcasting Broadcasting means one-to-all communication: a host sends a packet to all hosts in an internet. Broadcasting in this sense is not provided at the Internet level for the obvious reason that it may create a huge volume of traffic and use a huge amount of bandwidth. Partial broadcasting, however, is done in the Internet. For example, some peer-to-peer applications may use broadcasting to access all peers. Controlled broadcasting may also be done in a domain (area or autonomous system) mostly as a step to achieve multicasting. 21.#

21-1 MULTICAST BASICS Before discussing multicast routing protocols in the Internet, we need to discuss some multicasting basics: multicast addressing, collecting information about multicast groups, and multicast optimal trees. 21.#

221.2.1 Multicast Addresses In multicast communication, the sender is only one, but the receiver is many, sometimes thousands or millions spread all over the world. It should be clear that we cannot include the addresses of all recipients in the packet. The destination address of a packet, as described in the Internet Protocol (IP) should be only one. For this reason, we need multicast addresses. A multicast address defines a group of recipients, not a single one. In other words, a multicast address is an identifier for a group. 21.#

Figure 221.4: Needs for multicast addresses 21.#

Figure 221.5: A multicast address in binary 21.#

221.2.2 Delivery at Data-Link Layer In multicasting, the delivery at the Internet level is done using network-layer multicast addresses. However, data-link layer multicast addresses are also needed to deliver a multicast packet encapsulated in a frame. In the case of unicasting, this task is done by the ARP protocol, but, because the IP packet has a multicast IP address, the ARP protocol cannot find the corresponding MAC (physical) address to forward a multicast packet at the data-link layer. depends on whether or not the underlying data-link layer supports physical multicast addresses. 21.#

Figure 221.6: Mapping class D to Ethernet physical address 21.#

Example 221.1 Change the multicast IP address 232.43.14.7 to an Ethernet multicast physical address. Solution We can do this in two steps: We write the rightmost 23 bits of the IP address in hexadecimal. In our example, the result is 2B:0E:07. b. We add the result of part a to the starting Ethernet multicast address, which is 01:00:5E:00:00:00. The result is 21.18

Example 221.2 Change the multicast IP address 238.212.24.9 to an Ethernet multicast address. Solution a. The rightmost 3 bytes in hexadecimal are D4:18:09. We need to subtract 8 from the leftmost digit, resulting in 54:18:09. b. We add the result of part a to the Ethernet multicast starting address. The result is 21.19

Figure 221.7: Tunneling 21.#

221.2.3 Collecting Information Creation of forwarding tables in both unicast and multicast routing involves two steps: A router needs to know to which destinations it is connected. 2. Each router needs to propagate information obtained in the first step to all other routers so that each router knows to which destination each other router is connected. 21.#

Figure 221.8: Unicast versus multicast advertisement 21.#

221.2.4 Multicast Forwarding Another important issue in multicasting is the decision a router needs to make to forward a multicast packet. Forwarding in unicast and multicast communication is different. 21.#

Figure 221.9: Destination in unicasting and multicasting 21.#

Figure 221.10: Forwarding depends on the destination and the source 21.#

221.2.5 Two Approaches to Multicasting In multicast routing, as in unicast routing, we need to create routing trees to optimally route the packets from their source to their destination. However, as we discussed before, the multicast routing decision at each router depends not only on the destination of the packet, but also on the source of the packet. The involvement of the source in the routing process makes multicast routing much more difficult than unicast routing. For this reason, two different approaches in multicast routing have been developed: routing using source-based trees and routing using group-shared trees. 21.#

21-3 INTRADOMAIN PROTOCOLS During the last few decades, several intradomain multicast routing protocols have emerged. In this section, we discuss three of these protocols. Two are extensions of unicast routing protocols (RIP and OSPF), using the source-based tree approach; the third is an independent protocol which is becoming more and more popular. 21.#

221.3.1 DVMRP The Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol (DVMRP) is the extension of the Routing Information Protocol (RIP) which is used in unicast routing. It uses the source-based tree approach to multicasting. It is worth mentioning that each router in this protocol that receives a multicast packet to be forwarded implicitly creates a source-based multicast tree in three steps: 21.#

Figure 221.11: RPF versus RPB 21.#

Figure 221.12: RPB versus RPM 21.#

221.3.2 Multicast Link State (MOSPF) Multicast Open Shortest Path First (MOSPF) is the extension of the Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol, which is used in unicast routing. It also uses the source-based tree approach to multicasting. If the internet is running a unicast link-state routing algorithm, the idea can be extended to provide a multicast link-state routing algorithm. To extend unicasting to multicasting, each router needs to have another database, as with the case of unicast distance-vector routing, to show which interface has an active member in a particular group. 21.#

Figure 221.13: Example of tree formation in MOSPF 21.#

221.3.3 PIM Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) is the name given to a common protocol that needs a unicast routing protocol for its operation, but the unicast protocol can be either a distance-vector protocol or a link-state protocol. In other words, PIM needs to use the forwarding table of a unicast routing protocol to find the next router in a path to the destination, but it does not matter how the forwarding table is created. PIM has another interesting feature: it can work in two different modes: dense and sparse. 21.#

Figure 221.14: Idea behind PIM-DM 21.#

Figure 221.15: Idea behind PIM-SM 21.#

221.4 INTERDOMAIN PROTOCOLS The three protocols we discussed for multicast routing, DVMRP, MOSPF, and PIM, are designed to provide multicast communication inside an autonomous system. When the members of the groups are spread among different domains (ASs), we need an interdomain multicast routing protocol. 21.#

221.5 IGMP The protocol that is used today for collecting information about group membership is the Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP). IGMP is a protocol defined at the network layer; it is one of the auxiliary protocols, like ICMP, which is considered part of the IP. IGMP messages, like ICMP messages, are encapsulated in an IP datagram. 21.#

221.5.1 Messages There are only two types of messages in IGMP version 3, query and report messages, as shown in Figure 221.16. A query message is periodically sent by a router to all hosts attached to it to ask them to report their interests about membership in groups. A report message is sent by a host as a response to a query message. 21.#

Figure 221.16: IGMP operation 21.#

221.5.2 Propagation of Information After a router has collected membership information from the hosts and other routers at its own level in the tree, it can propagate it to the router located in a higher level of the tree. Finally, the router at the tree root can get the membership information to build the multicast tree. The process, however, is more complex than what we can explain in one paragraph. Interested readers can check the book website for the complete description of this protocol. 21.#

221.5.3 Encapsulation The IGMP message is encapsulated in an IP datagram with the value of the protocol field set to 2 and the TTL field set to 21. The destination IP address of the datagram, however, depends on the type of message, as shown in Table 221.21. 21.#

Table 221.1: Destination IP Addresses 21.42