Hello all. I have just started working as a Network engineer for a company and one of my first tasks is setting up the WAN to forward multicast traffic. Here is the scenario -
They want to stream live tv from a studio at their 'site A' to 2 other sites (B and C) across their metro-ethernet ring. I intend to use pim sparse with a static RP defined.
I'll use site A and B as reference for my question.
site A - the video stream server is connected to a 4510R access switch at site A. This access switch in turn uplinks to 2 6509 core switches running native IOS for site A. The 6509 core switches then connect to 2 ATM switches (a cisco 8540 and LS1010) which encapsulate the IP packet in AAL 5 and sends traffic over the provider ATM core network to the destination site (site B). Site B also has cisco 8540 and LS1010 ATM switches at the customer edge to decapsulate the traffic coming from site A and forward the packet to the site B core network.
I intend for one of the site A 6509s to be the RP.
site B - this is one of the sites that will receive the multicast stream. The receiver of the multicast stream (the digital decoder) will be connected to a 3548 access switch. This 3548 access switch in turn will be uplinked to the 2 6509 core switches. The 6509 core switches at this site B run in hybrid mode. catOS on the switching fabric and MSFC route processor. Just like site A the 2 core 6509s physically connect to 2 ATM swiches (one to each for redundancy)
routing from site to site is done through SVIs. The ATM network is completely transparent to the core 6509s. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can forward this multicast traffic from the source in site A to the destination in site B?
Some of the more specific questions I have are - should I enable IGMP snooping at the destination site B 3548 switch? I'm assuming thats a yes. My other question is that since this 3548 access switch will be uplinked (trunked) to the hybrid 6509 core switch do I need to configure anything on the 6509 trunk port. I am assuming not since the router portion of the 6509 will be configured for multicast-routing and the vlan will be configured for PIM sparse-mode. I think the IGMP on the 3548 should automatically discover that the trunk is the router port.
Do you think that I need pim configured on the ATM switch?
Can anyone think of anywhere that I will need the PIM sparse mode command configured other than the VLANs that I think the multicast traffic will be coming in on?
Should I put ip pim sparse on all the vlans so I dont miss anything, knowing that traffic wont be flooded in sparse mode anyway unless theres an igmp join request.
Maybe even pim sparse on the physical connection from the core 6509s to the ATM switches? I believe thats purely a layer 2 connection, but I'm just throwing stuff out there.
Also, lastly - this company does not have a prototype network environment. No lab environment. all testing will be done on the production environment. The stream is only 5mbs. They have more than enough bandwidth to accommodate this. What are the risks of testing this on the production network? Should I be updating my resume as a backup before testing this?
