Igmp commands – Dell POWEREDGE M1000E User Manual

Page 873

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IGMP Commands

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IGMP Commands

Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) is the multicast group

membership discovery protocol used for IPv4 multicast groups. Three

versions of IGMP exist. Versions one and two are widely deployed. Since

IGMP is used between end systems (often desktops) and the multicast router,

the version of IGMP required depends on the end-user operating system

being supported. Any implementation of IGMP must support all earlier

versions.
The following list describes the basic operation of IGMP, common to all

versions. A multicast router can act as both an IGMP host and an IGMP

router and as a result can respond to its own IGMP messages. The

PowerConnect implementation of IGMPv3 supports the multicast router

portion of the protocol (that is, not the host portion). It is backward

compatible with IGMPv1 and IGMPv2.

• One router periodically broadcasts IGMP Query messages onto the

network.

• Hosts respond to the Query messages by sending IGMP Report messages

indicating their group memberships.

• All routers receive the Report messages and note the memberships of hosts

on the network.

• If a router does not 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 network.

All IGMP messages are raw IP data grams and are sent to multicast group

addresses, with a time to leave (TTL) of 1. Since raw IP does not provide

reliable transport, some messages are sent multiple times to aid reliability.
IGMPv3 is a major revision of the protocol and provides improved group

membership latency. When a host joins a new multicast group on an

interface, it immediately sends an unsolicited IGMP Report message for that

group.

2CSPC4.XModular-SWUM200.book Page 873 Thursday, March 10, 2011 11:18 AM

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