All things related to multicast

[Stig Venaas <>]

Laura Kristoff wrote:
> We were wondering if anyone else would be interested in a
> cooperative effort to host computer(s) that other institutions
> could use to test their multicast from off-campus.
>
> We don't seem to have a good way to trouble shoot problems
> with multicast since it requires an active receiver and
> source.  We used to use the beacon to some extent but no
> longer have one and I'm told the software isn't being supported
> anymore.  That used to provide some level of trouble-shooting
> but my group is looking for something with more functionality.
>
> If we had a host somewhere that we could connect to and then
> join multicast groups or run traceroutes it would be very
> helpful. 
>
> Is anyone interested in such an effort? 

This sounds pretty interesting. It's unfortunately not something I
can take part in myself at the moment, but I'll discuss this with some
other people.

I would like to point out one alternative solution that I have done some
work on. Please have a look at http://www.multicast.org.uk/lg/

Could this be of interest? Basically you can have a number of hosts that
have some multicast testing tools installed and a web interface to run
them.

One tool is mcfirst, which can be used to check whether one can receive
a multicast group (or group and source). Then there are also ssmping and
asmping, they are used for check whether can receive multicast from an
asmping/ssmping server.

asmping/ssmping is something you can install yourself and you can check
reception from someone else that have an asmping/ssmping server. This
could be useful with a number of servers deployed. You can do that with
those tools on UNIX/Windows and no web interface. However, in some cases
you want to check if others can receive you, then the web interface
could be useful.

I have contacts with some different people that are trying to deploy
multicast probes, that run multicast beacons, but also the above tools
plus some others. E.g. also rtpqual or equivalent.

Stig

> --Laura