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mrouted(8) System Manager's Manual mrouted(8) NAME mrouted - IP multicast routing daemon SYNOPSIS /etc/mrouted [-p] [-c config_file] [-d [debug_level]] FLAGS Specifies that mrouted is to start as a nonpruning router. This can also be specified in the configuration file (see the Configuration File section). Specifies an alternative configuration file instead of /etc/mrouted.conf. Specifies the debugging level (default is 2). If the -d option is not specified or if the debug level is specified as 0, mrouted detaches from the invoking terminal. Otherwise, it remains at- tached to the invoking terminal and responsive to signals from that terminal. Regardless of the debug level, mrouted always writes warning and error messages to the system log demon. Nonzero debug levels have the following effects: Prints all syslog messages to stderr. Prints all level 1 messages and notifications of sig- nificant events to stderr. Prints all level 2 messages and no- tifications of all packet arrivals and departures to stderr. DESCRIPTION The mrouted program is an implementation of the Distance-Vector Multi- cast Routing Protocol (DVMRP), an earlier version of which is specified in RFC1075. The mrouted program maintains topological knowledge using a distance-vector routing protocol (like Routing Information Protocol (RIP), described in RFC1058), upon which it implements a multicast datagram forwarding algorithm called Reverse Path Multicasting. The mrouted program forwards a multicast datagram along a shortest (re- verse) path tree rooted at the subnet on which the datagram originates. The multicast delivery tree may be thought of as a broadcast delivery tree that has been pruned back so that it does not extend beyond those subnetworks that have members of the destination group. Hence, data- grams are not forwarded along those branches which have no listeners of the multicast group. The IP time-to-live of a multicast datagram can be used to limit the range of multicast datagrams. In order to support multicasting among subnets that are separated by (unicast) routers that do not support IP multicasting, mrouted includes support for tunnels, which are virtual point-to-point links between pairs of mrouted programs located anywhere in an internet. IP multi- cast packets are encapsulated for transmission through tunnels, so that they look like normal unicast datagrams to intervening routers and sub- nets. The encapsulation is added on entry to a tunnel, and stripped off on exit from a tunnel. By default, the packets are encapsulated using the IP-in-IP protocol (IP protocol number 4). Older versions of mrouted tunnels use IP source routing, which puts a heavy load on some types of routers. This version does not support IP source route tun- neling. The tunneling mechanism allows mrouted to establish a virtual internet, for the purpose of multicasting only, that is independent of the physi- cal internet and can span multiple autonomous systems. This capability is intended for experimental support of internet multicasting only, pending widespread support for multicast routing by the regular (uni- cast) routers. The mrouted program suffers from the well-known scaling problems of any distance-vector routing protocol, and does not support hierarchical multicast routing. The mrouted program handles multicast routing only; there may or may not be unicast routing software running on the same machine as mrouted. With the use of tunnels, it is not necessary for mrouted to have access to more than one physical subnet in order to perform multicast forward- ing. Upon startup, mrouted writes its PID to the /etc/mrouted.pid file. Configuration File The mrouted program automatically configures itself to forward on all multicast-capable interfaces (all interfaces except the loopback inter- face that have the IFF_MULTICAST flag set), and it finds other mrouted programs directly reachable through those interfaces. To override the default configuration or to add tunnel links to other mrouted programs, place configuration commands in the /etc/mrouted.conf file (or an al- ternative file specified by the -c option). The syntax of the valid configuration commands are as follows: phyint local-addr [disable] etric m] [threshold t] [rate_limit b] [boundary (bound- ary-name|scoped-addr/mask-len)] [altnet network/mask-len] tunnel local-addr remote-addr etric m] [threshold t] [rate_limit b] [boundary (boundary-name|scoped-addr/mask-len)] cache_lifetime ct pruning off|on name boundary-name scoped-addr/mask-len The file format is free-form; whitespace (including newlines) is not significant. Specify the boundary and altnet options as many times as necessary. A description of each command is as follows: Disables multicast routing on the physical interface identified by the local IP address local- addr, or associates a nondefault metric or threshold with the specified physical interface. The local IP address, local-addr, may be replaced by the interface name (for example, le0). If a phyint command is at- tached to multiple IP subnets, describe each additional subnet with the altnet keyword. The phyint commands must precede tunnel commands. Es- tablishes a tunnel link between the local IP address local-addr and the remote IP address remote-addr, and associates a nondefault metric or threshold with that tunnel. The tunnel must be set up in the mrouted.conf files of both routers before it can be used. Specifies the amount of time that a cached multicast route stays in the kernel before timing out. The value of this entry can be between 300 (5 min- utes) and 86400 (1 day). The default is 300. Specifies that mrouted is to act as a nonpruning router. This can also be done when you start mrouted by specifying the -p option on the command line. It is ex- pected that a router will be configured in this manner for testing pur- poses only. The default mode is pruning enabled. Assigns names to boundaries in order to ease configuration. The boundary option on phyint or tunnel commands can accept either a name or a boundary. The metric is the cost associated with sending a datagram on the given interface or tunnel; it may be used to influence the choice of routes. The metric defaults to 1. Metrics should be kept as small as possible, because mrouted cannot route along paths with a sum of metrics greater than 31. The threshold is the minimum IP time-to-live required for a multicast datagram to be forwarded to the given interface or tunnel. It is used to control the scope of multicast datagrams. (The TTL of forwarded packets is only compared to the threshold, it is not decremented by the threshold. Every multicast router decrements the TTL by 1.) The de- fault threshold is 1. In general, all mrouted programs connected to a particular subnet or tunnel should use the same metric and threshold for that subnet or tun- nel. The rate_limit option allows the network administrator to specify a certain bandwidth in kilobits per second that would be allocated to multicast traffic. It defaults to 500 Kb/s on tunnels; 0 (unlimited) on physical interfaces. The boundary option allows an interface to be configured as an adminis- trative boundary for the specified scoped address. Packets belonging to this address are not forwarded on a scoped interface. The boundary option accepts either a name or a boundary specification. The mrouted program does not initiate execution if it has fewer than two enabled virtual interfaces (vifs); a vif can be either a physical multicast-capable interface or a tunnel. If all vifs are tunnels, mrouted logs a warning; such mrouted configurations should be replaced by more direct tunnels. Sample Configuration File The following is a sample configuration file for a fictitious multicast router at a large academic institution: # # mrouted.conf example # # Name our boundaries to make it easier name LOCAL 239.255.0.0/16 name EE 239.254.0.0/16 # # le1 is our gateway to compsci, do not forward our # local groups to them phyint le1 boundary EE # # le2 is our interface on the classroom net, it has four # different length subnets on it. # note that you can use either an ip address or an # interface name phyint 172.16.12.38 boundary EE altnet 172.16.15.0/26 altnet 172.16.15.128/26 altnet 172.16.48.0/24 # # atm0 is our ATM interface, which does not properly # support multicasting. phyint atm0 dis- able # # This is an internal tunnel to another EE subnet # Remove the default tunnel rate limit, since this # tunnel is over ethernets tun- nel 192.168.5.4 192.168.55.101 metric 1 threshold 1 rate_limit 0 # # This is our tunnel to the outside world. # Careful with those bound- aries, Eugene. tunnel 192.168.5.4 10.11.12.13 metric 1 threshold 32 boundary LOCAL boundary EE EXAMPLES Routing Table The following is a sample routing table: Virtual Interface Table Vif Local-Address Metric Thresh Flags 0 36.2.0.8 subnet: 36.2 1 1 querier groups: 224.0.2.1 224.0.0.4 pkts in: 3456 pkts out: 2322323 1 36.11.0.1 subnet: 36.11 1 1 querier groups: 224.0.2.1 224.0.1.0 224.0.0.4 pkts in: 345 pkts out: 3456 2 36.2.0.8 tunnel: 36.8.0.77 3 1 peers: 36.8.0.77 (2.2) boundaries: 239.0.1 : 239.1.2 pkts in: 34545433 pkts out: 234342 3 36.2.0.8 tunnel: 36.6.8.23 3 16 Multicast Routing Table (1136 entries) Origin-Subnet From-Gateway Metric Tmr In-Vif Out-Vifs 36.2 1 45 0 1* 2 3* 36.8 36.8.0.77 4 15 2 0* 1* 3* 36.11 1 20 1 0* 2 3* . . . In the previous example, there are four vifs connecting to two subnets and two tunnels. The vif 3 tunnel is not in use (no peer address). The vif 0 and vif 1 subnets have some groups present; tunnels never have any groups. This instance of mrouted sends periodic group membership queries on the vif 0 and vif 1 subnets, as indicated by the querier flags. The list of boundaries indicates the scoped addresses on that interface. A count of the number of incoming and outgoing packets is also shown at each interface. Associated with each subnet from which a multicast datagram can origi- nate is the address of the previous hop router (unless the subnet is directly-connected), the metric of the path back to the origin, the amount of time since we last received an update for this subnet, the incoming vif for multicasts from that origin, and a list of outgoing vifs. An asterisk (*) means that the outgoing vif is connected to a leaf of the broadcast tree rooted at the origin, and a multicast data- gram from that origin will be forwarded on that outgoing vif only if there are members of the destination group on that leaf. The mrouted program also maintains a copy of the kernel forwarding cache table. Entries are created and deleted by mrouted. Cache Table The following is a sample cache table: Multicast Routing Cache Table (147 entries) Origin Mcast-group CTmr Age Ptmr IVif Forwvifs 13.2.116/22 224.2.127.255 3m 2m - 0 1 >13.2.116.19 >13.2.116.196 138.96.48/21 224.2.127.255 5m 2m - 0 1 >138.96.48.108 128.9.160/20 224.2.127.255 3m 2m - 0 1 >128.9.160.45 198.106.194/24 224.2.135.190 9m 28s 9m 0P >198.106.194.22 Each entry is characterized by the origin subnet number and mask and the destination multicast group. A description of the remaining fields is as follows: Indicates the lifetime of the entry. The entry is deleted from the cache table when the timer decrements to zero. Indi- cates the time since this cache entry was originally created. Since cache entries get refreshed if traffic is flowing, routing entries can grow very old. Indicates the amount of time until the upstream prune times out. This is a dash (-) if no prune was sent upstream. Indi- cates the incoming vif for multicast packets from that origin. Each router also maintains a record of the number of prunes received from neighbouring routers for a particular source and group. If there are no members of a multicast group on any downward link of the multicast tree for a subnet, a prune message is sent to the upstream router. They are indicated by a "P" after the vif number. Shows the interfaces along which datagrams belonging to the source-group are forwarded. A "p" in- dicates that no datagrams are being forwarded along that interface. An unlisted interface is a leaf subnet with no members of the particular group on that subnet. A "b" on an interface indicates that it is a boundary interface; traffic is not forwarded on the scoped address on that interface. An additional line with a ">" as the first character is printed for each source on the subnet. Note that one subnet can contain many sources. SIGNALS The mrouted program responds to the following signals: Restarts mrouted. The configuration file is reread every time this signal is invoked. Sends good-bye messages to all neighboring routers and termi- nates execution. Same as INT. Dumps the internal routing tables to the /usr/tmp/mrouted.dump file. Dumps the internal cache tables to the /usr/tmp/mrouted.cache file. Dumps the internal routing tables to stderr (only if mrouted was invoked with a nonzero debug level). For convenience in sending signals, mrouted writes its PID to the /etc/mrouted.pid file upon startup. FILES Specifies the default configuration file. Specifies the mrouted PID file. Specifies the default dump file. Specifies the default cache file. RELATED INFORMATION Commands: map-mbone(8), mrinfo(8), mtrace(8). Networking: mbone.info(7). DVMRP is described, along with other multicast routing algorithms, in the paper Multicast Routing in Internetworks and Extended LANs by S. Deering, in the Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM '88 Conference. AUTHORS Steve Deering, Ajit Thyagarajan, Bill Fenner delim off mrouted(8)