
Configuring IP Multicasting Services
1-2 114064 Rev. A
An IP multicasting host group can consist of zero or more members and places no
restrictions on its membership. Host members can reside anywhere; they can join
and leave the group at any time; and they can be members of more than one group
at the same time. In order to receive a multicast message from a host group, a host
must be a member of the group. However, anyone can send a multicast datagram:
a host does not need to be a member of a group to send a multicast message to its
members.
In general, hosts that are members of the same group reside on different networks.
However, a range of multicast addresses (224.0.0.x) is reserved for groups that are
locally scoped. All message traffic for these hosts remains on the local network.
Hosts that belong to a group in this address range and that reside in different
networks will not receive each other’s message traffic.
Multicast Addresses
Each host group is assigned a unique multicast address. To reach all members of
the group, a sender uses the multicast address as the destination address of the
datagram.
An IP Version 4 multicast address is a Class D address (the high-order bits are set
to 1110) in the range of 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255.
The block of addresses from 224.0.0.1 to 224.0.0.255 is reserved for the use of
routing protocols and other low-level protocols. Multicast routers will not forward
datagrams with addresses in this range.
Note: Multicast data packets are affected by traffic filters. The network
administrator must ensure that traffic filters configured on a multicast router do
not prevent a host that is a member of a group from receiving packets intended
for that group.
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