Multicast Routing (DVMRP, PIM)

MULTICAST ROUTING (DVMRP, PIM)

A router’s unicast forwarding tables indicate, for any IP address, which link to use to forward the unicast packet. To support multicast, a router must additionally have multicastforwarding tables that indicate, based on multicast address, which links—possibly more than one—to use to forward the multicast packet (the router duplicates the packet if it is to be forwarded over multiple links). Thus, where unicast forwarding tables collectively specify a set of paths, multicast forwarding tables collectively specify a set of trees: multicast distribution trees. Furthermore, to support source-specific multicast (and, it turns out, for some types of any source multicast), the multicast forwarding tables must indicate which links to use based on the combination of multicast address and the (unicast) IP address of the source, again specifying a set of trees.

Multicast routing is the process by which the multicast distribution trees are determined or, more concretely, the process by which the multicast forwarding tables are built. As with unicast routing, it is not enough that a multicast routing protocol “work”; it must also scale reasonably well as the network grows, and it must accommodate the autonomy of different routing domains.