Multicast protocols

Layer 3 multicast protocols include:
  • IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) for last-hop multicast group management. Current RFCs include:

    • IGMPv2 (RFC 2236)

    • IGMPv3 (RFC 3376)

  • PIM (Protocol Independent Multicast) for intra-domain multicast routing.

    • PIM-SM (sparse mode) (RFC 4601)

    • BSR (Bootstrap router) (RFC 5059)

Layer 2 multicast protocol:

  • IGMP snooping provides for L2 multicast filtering.