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Separate multicast on two different vlans running on the same switch

Ulrik Rosen
Level 1
Level 1

Hi
We have a problem with unstable channels in TV-boxes on our multicast network (with other equipment such as crestron/barco) and want to separate the TV boxes on the network from the other ones. Multiple switches are used (Cat9300/9500s)

I have read a lot of discussions and examples about multicast/PIM etc. and not found any that could help me to get a clue on this... 

At the moment we are using only one vlan with igmp and one querier enabled, all other vlans have igmp disabled
Crestron/barco boxes is working perfectly but the channels on the TV-boxes are somtimes lost and seem to be distrurbed due to some channel seeking...
Now we want to separate them from each other but still use the same switches but on different vlans

How do i "isolate" the multicast traffic on the two vlans from each other so that the TV-box streams is not disturbed by the other audio/video streams?

All suggestions are welcome 

6 Replies 6

Joseph W. Doherty
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

Multicast delivery, is much like broadcast delivery, on the same L2 domain, without IGMP snooping.  Without IGMP snooping, using different L2 domains (i.e. VLANs) can constrain where multicast "floods" (this also assumes, multicast is not "wanted" on other L2 domains).

With (correctly working) IGMP snooping, using different L2 domains, I believe, would make make little difference, beyond possibly increasing the load on the L3 device(s) doing multicast routing.

The problem is that if i, beside the enabled querier, also enable igmp on the second vlan, any multicast traffic will be seen on both vlans and can be used for multicast streaming.
I want to totally separate the multicast from the two vlans so that the vlan for tv-boxes would be clear of the other vlan with crestron/barco equipment.

How to accomplish this?,  How to configure?

Can a vrf separate this as i want?
Do i need to setup an ip pim?

/U

I'm somewhat confused about your topology.  If your VLANs are separate L2 domains, multicast should only flow between them if you're doing multicast routing which requires a multicast receiver to pull multicast from another subnet.  (NB: DM mode will flood then prune.)

If IGMP snooping is working properly, hosts shouldn't "see" multicast they don't want UNLESS you're using the same multicast IP for different flows OR your different multicast IPs are mapping to the same Ethernet multicast MACs.

Ulrik Rosen
Level 1
Level 1

I checked the config in the switch that supply the querier and it looks like this:
I have enabled ip multicast routing in general config and also ip pim sparse-dense-mode on the vlan interface.
So if disable multicast routing an remove ip pim... from the interface i will be able to separate my multicast network traffic by assigning the tv-boxes to a different vlan from the crestron/barco vlan. TV-boxes only require a network with igmp enabled and no need for querier (as i was told).

Will this be the expected behaviour?

Sorry, still confused.

For example, "TV-boxes only require a network with igmp enabled and no need for querier (as i was told)." doesn't make sense.  Unclear what enabling IGMP on a network means.  IGMP is needed for multicast routing, as it is used so that multicast traffic is routed between the multicast source and multicast recipients.

If multicast source and multicast recipients are in the same L2 domain, IGMP is not needed unless you want to also use IGMP snooping.

Since IGMP is needed for multicast routing, multicast routers are IGMP queriers.  When there's no multicast router, and you want to use IGMP snooping, it needs a IGMP querier, which IGMP snooping capable switches often support, i.e. being a querier in lieu of the non-existent multicast router.

Since you've enabled both PIM SM and DM, it's possible you're doing flood-and-prune multicast routing.  Which isn't usually as efficient as SM alone, but again, if you're also doing IGMP snooping, unless you've bumped into the conditions I described in a prior post, your hosts shouldn't even "see" multicast packets they have no interest in.

At this point, it seems to me, you're possibly not well versed in multicast, which might lead to the issues you're seeing and/or what you have in mind for a "solution" might not be an effective solution.

If the foregoing is true, I would suggest more study of how multicast works, or see if you can retain someone locally, with multicast experience, to assist you.

Ulrik Rosen
Level 1
Level 1

Guilty as charged, i'm not as well into multicast as i wan't to be...
IGMP is enable ONLY on the specific vlan that we use for multcast streaming, (globally enable igmp and all other vlans has igmp disabled)

the setup we are using was made a couple of years ago mostly because we were in a hurry..., and we made i quick check on the cisco pages for basic configuration just to make it work at the moment, and has not been changed since then
I will definitly study more on multicast to be sure on what to do next. 
So to summarize your answer, the setup we use is "overconfigured" for the actual usage and could be more simple and straight forward with no multicast routing enabled at all and remove the need for the ip pim from the vlan interface and keep the querier on the multicast vlan 

We can enable igmp on a second vlan for the TV-boxes and this will do the trick to separate the multcast streams on the vlans from each other to solve the channel search disturbance with the TV boxes
/U

 

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