10G Core Routing Switch User Manual
陈泽科技有限公司
- - 57 - -
www.stephen-tele.com
Multimedia and streaming media application
Occasional communication for training and cooperation
Data storage and finance (stock) operation
Point-to-multipoint data distribution
With the increasing popularity of multimedia services over IP network, multicast is gaining its marketplace.
Implementation of IP Multicast
Multicast Addresses
In multicast mode, there are questions about where to send the information, how to locate the destination or know
the receiver. All these questions can be narrowed down to multicast addressing. To guarantee the communication
between a multicast source and a multicast group, the network layer multicast address (namely the IP multicast
address) is required, along with the technique to correlate it with the link layer MAC multicast address. Following is the
introduction to these two kinds of addresses.
I. IP Multicast Addresses
According to the definition in Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA), IP addresses fall into four types: Class A,
Class B, Class C and Class D. Unicast packets use IP addresses of Class A, Class B or Class C, depending on specific packet
scales.Multicast packets use IP addresses of Class D as their destination addresses, but Class D IP addresses cannot be
contained in the source IP field of IP packets.
During unicast data transmission, a packet is transmitted "hop-by-hop" from the source address to the destination
address. However, in IP multicast environment, a packet has more than one destination address, or a group of
addresses. All the information receivers are added to a group. Once a receiver joins the group, the data for this group
of addresses start flowing to this receiver. All members in the group can receive the packets.
Membership here is dynamic, and a host can join or leave the group at any time. A multicast group can be permanent
or temporary. Some multicast group addresses are allocated by IANA, and the multicast group is called permanent
multicast group. The IP addresses of a permanent multicast group are unchangeable, but its membership is changeable,
and the number of members is arbitrary. It is quite possible for a permanent group to not a single member. Those not
reserved for permanent multicast groups can be used by temporary multicast groups. Class D multicast addresses
range from 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255. More information is listed in Table 13-1 Ranges and meanings of Class D
addresses.
Table
Ranges and meanings of Class D addresses
Class D address range
Description
224.0.0.0
∼
224.0.0.255
Reserved multicast addresses (addresses of
permanent groups). All but 224.0.0.0 can be
allocated by routing protocols.
224.0.1.0
∼
238.255.255.255
Multicast addresses available for users (addresses of
temporary groups). They are valid in the entire
network.
239.0.0.0
∼
239.255.255.255
Multicast addresses for local management. They are
valid only in the specified local range.