3com WX3000 Benutzerhandbuch

 

1-7 

As receivers are multiple hosts in a multicast group, you should be concerned about the following 

questions:  

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What destination should the information source send the information to in the multicast mode?  

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How to select the destination address?  

These questions are about multicast addressing. To enable the communication between the information 

source and members of a multicast group (a group of information receivers), network-layer multicast 

addresses, namely, IP multicast addresses must be provided. In addition, a technology must be 

available to map IP multicast addresses to link-layer MAC multicast addresses. The following sections 

describe these two types of multicast addresses:  

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) categorizes IP addresses into five classes: A, B, C, D, and 

E. Unicast packets use IP addresses of Class A, B, and C based on network scales. Class D IP 

addresses are used as destination addresses of multicast packets. Class D address must not appear in 

the IP address field of a source IP address of IP packets. Class E IP addresses are reserved for future 

use.  

In unicast data transport, a data packet is transported hop by hop from the source address to the 

destination address. In an IP multicast environment, there are a group of destination addresses (called 

group address), rather than one address. All the receivers join a group. Once they join the group, the 

data sent to this group of addresses starts to be transported to the receivers. All the members in this 

group can receive the data packets. This group is a multicast group.  

A multicast group has the following characteristics:  

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The membership of a group is dynamic. A host can join and leave a multicast group at any time.  

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A multicast group can be either permanent or temporary.  

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A multicast group whose addresses are assigned by IANA is a permanent multicast group. It is also 

called reserved multicast group.  

Note that:  

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The IP addresses of a permanent multicast group keep unchanged, while the members of the 

group can be changed.  

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There can be any number of, or even zero, members in a permanent multicast group.  

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Those IP multicast addresses not assigned to permanent multicast groups can be used by 

temporary multicast groups.  

Class D IP addresses range from 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255. For details, see 

. 

Table 1-2 Range and description of Class D IP addresses 

224.0.0.0 to 224.0.0.255 

Reserved multicast addresses (IP addresses for permanent 
multicast groups). The IP address 224.0.0.0 is reserved. 
Other IP addresses can be used by routing protocols. 

224.0.1.0 to 231.255.255.255 

233.0.0.0 to 238.255.255.255 

Available any-source multicast (ASM) multicast addresses 
(IP addresses for temporary groups). They are valid for the 
entire network. 

232.0.0.0 to 232.255.255.255 

Available source-specific multicast (SSM) multicast group 
addresses.