All things related to multicast

[Bill Owens <>]

On Fri, Apr 30, 2004 at 01:16:32PM -0700, Kevin C. Almeroth wrote:
>     +  Support for IPv6.  Currently the plan is to offer IPv6 SSM.
>        Also under discussion in the Abilene NOC is whether to
>        provide an Embedded RP.

I think perhaps that the second sentence is mixing two things; the question 
of whether to operate an RP for some group address range within the Abilene 
backbone, and the question of whether the Abilene core routers will support 
embedded-RP.

The first probably implies that the Abilene routers will also be configured 
with knowledge of the existing global RP at RENATER and the other well-known 
RPs being used on the m2bone, and therefore be able to support ASM with 
existing tools. Some people fell that this would be a technical misstep, 
either because they don't like the idea of a shared RP, or because they don't 
like ASM.

The second requires that JUNOS support embedded-RP, which it does not at 
present. It also implies support for ASM. 

And finally it is worth noting that AFAIK there are few tools or OSes that 
support IPv6 SSM. That's something that ought to be fixed over time, but for 
the moment supporting only SSM is roughly equivalent to not supporting IPv6 
multicast at all. . .

Bill.