IE-SW-VL08M Series User’s Manual
Featured Functions
3-53
Benefits of Multicast
The benefits of using IP multicast are that it:
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Uses the most efficient, sensible method to deliver the same information to many receivers with
only one transmission.
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Reduces the load on the source (for example, a server) since it will not need to produce several
copies of the same data.
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Makes efficient use of network bandwidth and scales well as the number of multicast group
members increases.
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Works with other IP protocols and services, such as Quality of Service (QoS).
Multicast transmission makes more sense and is more efficient than unicast transmission for some
applications. For example, multicasts are often used for video-conferencing, since high volumes of
traffic must be sent to several end-stations at the same time, but where broadcasting the traffic to all
end-stations would cause a substantial reduction in network performance. Furthermore, several
industrial automation protocols, such as Allen-Bradley, EtherNet/IP, Siemens Profibus, and
Foundation Fieldbus HSE (High Speed Ethernet), use multicast. These industrial Ethernet protocols
use publisher/subscriber communications models by multicasting packets that could flood a network
with heavy traffic. IGMP Snooping is used to prune multicast traffic so that it travels only to those
end destinations that require the traffic, reducing the amount of traffic on the Ethernet LAN.
Multicast Filtering
Multicast filtering ensures that only end-stations that have joined certain groups receive multicast
traffic. With multicast filtering, network devices only forward multicast traffic to the ports that are
connected to registered end-stations. The following two figures illustrate how a network behaves
without multicast filtering, and with multicast filtering.
Network without multicast filtering
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Serial ports
Console
LAN
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IGMP Group2
Group 1 Multicast Stream
Group 2 Multicast Stream
IGMP Group1
IGMP Group2
IGMP Group1
All hosts receive the multicast traffic, even if they don’t need it.
