Microsens MS453490M Management Guide - Manual (Page 442)

C HAPTER 18 | Multicast Filtering
Layer 2 IGMP (Snooping and Query)
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device, most commonly a multicast router. In this way, the switch can
discover the ports that want to join a multicast group, and set its filters
accordingly.
If there is no multicast router attached to the local subnet, multicast traffic
and query messages may not be received by the switch. In this case (Layer
2) IGMP Query can be used to actively ask the attached hosts if they want
to receive a specific multicast service. IGMP Query thereby identifies the
ports containing hosts requesting to join the service and sends data out to
those ports only. It then propagates the service request up to any
neighboring multicast switch/router to ensure that it will continue to
receive the multicast service.
The purpose of IP multicast filtering is to optimize a switched network’s
performance, so multicast packets will only be forwarded to those ports
containing multicast group hosts or multicast routers/switches, instead of
flooding traffic to all ports in the subnet (VLAN).
L AYER 2 IGMP (S NOOPING AND Q UERY )
IGMP Snooping and Query – If multicast routing is not supported on other
switches in your network, you can use IGMP Snooping and IGMP Query
( page 444 ) to monitor IGMP service requests passing between multicast
clients and servers, and dynamically configure the switch ports which need
to forward multicast traffic. IGMP Snooping conserves bandwidth on
network segments where no node has expressed interest in receiving a
specific multicast service. For switches that do not support multicast
routing, or where multicast routing is already enabled on other switches in
the local network segment, IGMP Snooping is the only service required to
support multicast filtering.
When using IGMPv3 snooping, service requests from IGMP Version 1, 2 or
3 hosts are all forwarded to the upstream router as IGMPv3 reports. The
primary enhancement provided by IGMPv3 snooping is in keeping track of
information about the specific multicast sources which downstream
IGMPv3 hosts have requested or refused. The switch maintains information
about both multicast groups and channels, where a group indicates a
multicast flow for which the hosts have not requested a specific source (the
only option for IGMPv1 and v2 hosts unless statically configured on the
switch), and a channel indicates a flow for which the hosts have requested
service from a specific source.
Only IGMPv3 hosts can request service from a specific multicast source.
When downstream hosts request service from a specific source for a
multicast service, these sources are all placed in the Include list, and traffic
is forwarded to the hosts from each of these sources. IGMPv3 hosts may
also request that service be forwarded from any source except for those
specified. In this case, traffic is filtered from sources in the Exclude list,
and forwarded from all other available sources.