D-Link DES-3326SR User Manual page 105

DES-3326SR Layer 3 Fast Ethernet Switch User's Guide
packet on all links except the one on which it was received.
This guarantees that all routers in the network will receive a
copy of the packet. The only information the router needs to
store is whether a link is a part of the spanning tree (leads to a
router) or not.
Multicast spanning trees do not use group membership
information when deciding to forward or drop a given multicast
packet.
Reverse Path Broadcasting (RPB)
The Reverse Path Broadcasting (RPB) algorithm is an
enhancement of the multicast spanning tree algorithm. RPB
constructs a spanning tree for each multicast source. When
the router receives a multicast packet, it then checks to
determine if the packet was received on the shortest path back
from the router to the source. If the packet was received on the
shortest path back to the source, the packet is forwarded on all
links except the link on which the packet was received. If the
packet was not received on the shortest link back to the
source, the packet is dropped.
If a link-state routing protocol is in use, RPB on a local router
can determine if the path from the source through the local
router to an immediately neighboring router. If it is not, the
packet will be dropped at the next router and the packet
should not be forwarded.
If a distance-vector routing protocol is in use, a neighboring
router can either advertise its previous hop for the source as
part of its routing update messages. This will 'poison-reverse'
the route (or have the local router prune the branch from the
multicast source to the neighboring router because the
neighboring router has a better route from the source to the
next router or subnetwork).
Since multicast packets are forwarded through the shortest
route between source and destination, RPB is fast. A given
router also does not need information about the entire
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