ZyXEL Communications XGS-4526 User Manual

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Chapter 38 IGMP
XGS-4526/4528F/4728F User’s Guide
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IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) is used by multicast hosts to indicate 
their multicast group membership to multicast routers. Multicast routers can also 
use IGMP to periodically check if multicast hosts still want to receive transmission 
from a multicast server. In other words, multicast routers check if any hosts on 
their network are still members of a specific multicast group. 
The Switch supports IGMP version 1 (IGMP-v1), version 2 (IGMP-v2) and IGMP 
version 3 (IGMP-v3). Refer to RFC 1112, RFC 2236 and RFC 3376 for information 
on IGMP versions 1, 2 and 3 respectively. At start up, the Switch queries all 
directly connected networks to gather group membership. After that, the Switch 
periodically updates this information. 
38.1.1  How IGMP Works
This section describes how IGMP works and the changes it has gone through from 
version 1 to version 3. IGMP version 1 defines how a multicast router checks to 
see if any multicast hosts are part of a multicast group. It checks for group 
membership by sending out an IGMP Query packet. Hosts that are members of a 
multicast group reply with an IGMP Report packet. This is also referred to as a join 
group request. The multicast router then keeps a list of all networks that have 
members of this multicast group and forwards multicast traffic to that network.   
Figure 169   IGMP Version 1 Example 
The main difference in IGMP version 2 is that it provides a mechanism for a 
multicast group member to notify a multicast router that it is leaving a multicast 
group. The multicast router then sends a group-specific IGMP query to check if 
there are any members remaining in that group. If the multicast router does not 
receive an IGMP report from any members, it stops sending multicast traffic to 
that group. This change helps shorten the leave convergence time, in other words, 
the amount of time that a multicast router believes that there are group members 
2 Report
1 Query