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III-11 IGMP Snooping
IGMP snooping is the process of listening to Internet Group Management
Protocol (IGMP) network traffic to control delivery of IP multicasts. Network
switches with IGMP snooping listen in on the IGMP conversation between
hosts and routers and maintain a map of which links need which IP multicast
transmission. Multicasts may be filtered from the links which do not need
them, conserving bandwidth on those links.
IGMP snooping allows a switch to only forward multicast traffic to the links
that have solicited them. Snooping is therefore especially useful for
bandwidth-intensive IP multicast applications such as IPTV.
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