All things related to multicast

[Michael Hare <>]

Folks-

I work for WiscNet (statewide educational network) up in Wisconsin.  We're 
starting to offer multicast services to any of our 500+ members who request 
it.  We currently run a sparse-mode WAN network, use anycast RP, and have 
two MSDP peering points with the outside world.  I'm struggling with how to 
exchange multicast with those members.  How are other organizations 
operating?

We're currently letting each member use our RP.   We use OSPF pretty much 
exclusively as our IGP (BGP with very few members).  Seems to work OK.  We 
thought this would be the easiest to troubleshoot (for us).  Caveats 
include unnecessary WAN link utilization until SPT's are built for traffic 
that is really only supposed to stay inside the campus..  I don't yet have 
a feel for how thats really happening.

I've also thought up of a second approach.  Each site could have their own 
RP and we'd MSDP peer with them.  From what I've read, you can only run 
MSDP with a non BGP neighbor if you're peering with a single MSDP peer or a 
mesh group..  So I'm assuming our customers could run an MSDP mesh with our 
border routers, and then I'd have to create separate mesh groups on each of 
our border routers for each customer.  This sounds a lot more complicated 
but seems to avoid unnecessary multicast traffic on our WAN links, and 
introduces lots of MSDP traffic in its place

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks-
-Michael

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Michael Hare
UW-Madison Network Engineering
WiscNet Network Engineering
My phone: 608-262-5236
24-Hour NOC: 608-263-4188
WiscNet: 608-265-6761