All things related to multicast

["Lappa, Joseph" <>]

Hi,

   Here are UofPitt, we're running a fairly simple multicast environment

We want make our infrastructure more robust, but still keep it easy to
debug.  
With that in mind...

We're a multi-vender site with Ciscos in the core and a pair of Junipers
for 
our border routers.  We run HSRP in many locations with our Ciscos (8
core 
6509s with MSFC running a mix of merged and hybrid code, with going to
merged 
soon across campus).  We want to make our multicast routing as robust
and 
efficient. 

   We are thinking of two possible scenarios:

        1) Make each of our core Cisco 6500s MSDP peers with each other 
         (full mesh), with our Junipers, and configure Anycast-RP with
PIM-SM.

        2) Make each of our core Cisco 6500s MSDP peers with each other 
          (full mesh), with our Junipers, and run PIM BSR with PIM-SM.

   
Questions are:

  What is the prefered method these days determining RP?  Anycast-RP or
BSR?
 
  Are there any problems in running Anycast-RP with HSRP?

  How hard is it to debug problems with Anycast-RP vs. PIM BSR?

  Will MSDP updates cause a big hit on our 6500 MSFCs?  

Thanks,
Joe Lappa
University of Pittsburgh