Lucent Technologies 6000 - Manual (Page 427)

MAX 6000/3000 Network Configuration Guide 10-1
10 Setting Up IP Multicast Forwarding
You can configure your MAX unit to act as a multicast forwarder, responding as a client to
IGMP packets from the Multicast Backbone (MBONE) router and acting as an MBONE router
by forwarding IGMP queries to clients, receiving their responses, and forwarding multicast
traffic.
To configure the unit for this role, you enable multicast forwarding, identify the MBONE
router, and identify and configure WAN and LAN interfaces for accepting multicast traffic.
Parameters for configuring the multicast system behavior are located in the Ethernet > Mod
Configure > Multicast profile. Parameters for configuring WAN interfaces (and the MBONE
router identification when it is located across a WAN) are located in Connection profiles for
the WAN.
Introduction to multicast forwarding
Video and audio transmissions use one-to-many and many-to-many communication, rather
than the point-to-point communications that many other types of network applications use.
This type of transmission is provided by the IP Multicast Backbone (MBONE) as a much
cheaper and faster way to communicate the same information to multiple hosts.
MBONE routers maintain multicast groups, in which hosts must register to receive a multicast
transmission. Multicast group functions are handled using the Internet Group Management
Protocol (IGMP). The MAX forwards IGMP version-1 or version-2 packets, including IGMP
MTRACE (multicast trace).
The interface to the MBONE router is the MBONE interface. The MAX can have one
MBONE interface, either a LAN or WAN IP interface, depending on where the MBONE
router is located.
When it is configured to act as a multicast forwarder, the MAX appears to MBONE routers as
a multicast client, because it responds as a client to IGMP packets. The MAX appears to
multicast clients to be an MBONE router, because it forwards IGMP queries to those clients,
receives their responses, and forwards multicast traffic.
Introduction to multicast forwarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10-1
Configuring multicast forwarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10-2
Examples of multicast forwarding configuration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10-5