Cisco Systems 3200 User Manual

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C-15
Cisco 3200 Series Router Hardware Reference
OL-5816-10
Appendix C      Switch Port Functionality
  IGMP Snooping
Verifying Storm Control
Use the show storm-control command to view switch port characteristics, including the storm control 
levels set on the interface.
To verify storm-control statistics on an interface, use the following commands, beginning in privileged 
EXEC mode:
IGMP Snooping
Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) snooping allows the switch to “listen in” on the IGMP 
conversation between hosts and routers. When a switch “hears” an IGMP report from a host for a given 
multicast group, the switch adds the host’s port number to the Group Destination Address (GDA) list for 
that group. And, when the switch hears an IGMP leave, it removes the host’s port from the 
content-addressable memory (CAM) table entry. 
The purpose of IGMP snooping is to restrain multicast traffic in a switched network. By default, a LAN 
switch floods multicast traffic within the broadcast domain, and this can consume a lot of bandwidth if 
many multicast servers are sending streams to the segment. 
Multicast traffic is flooded because a switch usually learns MAC addresses by looking into the source 
address field of all the frames it receives. But, since a multicast MAC address is never used as source 
address for a packet and since the addresses do not appear in the MAC address table, the switch has no 
method for learning the addresses. 
IGMP Snooping Configuration
IGMP snooping is enabled by default on a VLAN.   Multicast routing has to be enabled on the router 
first and then PIM (Multicast routing protocol) has to be enabled on the VLAN interface so that the 
switch acknowledges the IGMP join and leave messages which are sent from the hosts connected to the 
switch. For example:
Router(config)# ip multicast-routing
Router(config-if)# interface VLAN1
ip-address 192.168.10.1 255.255.255.0
ip pim sparse-mode
To verify multicasting support, use the show ip igmp group command:
Router# show ip igmp group
Command
Purpose
show interface
 [
interface-id] 
counters broadcast
Verifies the broadcast suppression discard counter for all 
interfaces or a specific interface. Verify the number of packets 
discarded.
show interface
 [
interface-id] 
counters multicast
Verifies the multicast suppression discard counter for all 
interfaces or a specific interface. Verify the number of packets 
discarded.
show interface
 [
interface-id] 
counters unicast
Verifies the unicast suppression discard counter for all 
interfaces or a specific interface. Verify the number of packets 
discarded.