Chapter 17: Multicast; Multicast Forwarding - Cisco 500 Series Administration Manual

Multicast

Multicast Forwarding

Cisco 500 Series Managed Switch Administration Guide
This section describes the Multicast Forwarding feature, and covers the following
topics:
• Multicast Forwarding
• Multicast Properties
• MAC Group Address
• IP Multicast Group Addresses
• IPv4 Multicast Configuration
• IPv6 Multicast Configuration
• IGMP/MLD Snooping IP Multicast Group
• Multicast Router Ports
• Forward All
• Unregistered Multicast
Multicast forwarding enables one-to-many information dissemination. Multicast
applications are useful for dissemination of information to multiple clients, where
clients do not require reception of the entire content. A typical application is a
cable-TV-like service, where clients can join a channel in the middle of a
transmission, and leave before it ends.
The data is sent only to relevant ports. Forwarding the data only to the relevant
ports conserves bandwidth and host resources on links.
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