An Architecture for Wide-Area

Multicast Routing
(Protocol Independent Multicast -
PIM)

Computer Science
Deering, 6390
Estrin, – Advanced
Farinacci, Computer
Jacobson, Networks
Liu, Wei
Dr.SIGCOMM
Jorge A. Cobb
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Motivation
 Receivers and senders of are often sparsely populated over a
very wide area.
 An internetwork often contains many possible paths between a
source S and any receiver.
 Flood and prune protocols discover receivers by sending
packets everywhere, and pruning back when there are no
receivers
• inefficient in the wide area

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Shared and Shortest-Path (source) distribution trees

 Shared tree is used by all receivers and senders of a group.

• Allows very large scale.
• All sources can send data via this tree
• All receivers receive data via this tree
• Routers only need to keep track of information for one tree
 Shortest-Path (source) trees are possible
• A specific tree can be built for a source with much traffic
• Last hop routers can
• change to the shortest path tree for certain sources, and
• receive from the shared tree for other sources.
• Switch to shortest-path tree usually if the data rate of the
source is high

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Receiver Driven
 Trees are built using a form of reverse-path forwarding
• Your parent on the tree is the next-hop to the root.
 Explicit join/prune tree management.
• Routers with local (same LAN) receivers send an explicit
join along the path to the root
• All routers along this path will join the multicast tree (if not
on it already)
• Prune messages remove tree branches if receivers are no
longer on their subtree

 We say that PIM-SM is thus receiver driven.

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 Tree Construction
 Designated routers send join messages along the next hop to root
 Each router along the way
• records where the message is received from (i.e. who is the child)
• Forwards the join to the next hop to the root (its parent)
 Tree edges are maintained by periodic refresh messages
Root

Tree
Join Tree
Join
Tree
Join edges
edges edges

R1 R2 R3

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Routing protocol independence
 Makes use of existing unicast routing functionality to guide tree
construction.

 It is independent of the particular protocol used.

 Only knowledge of the next-hop to a destination is needed.

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Multicast forwarding states at routers

 used to determine how a multicast packet will be forwarded

 consists of several elements:

• source address – S ( S = * for the shared tree )
• group address - G
• incoming interface – iif (parent on the tree)
• outgoing interface list – oif list (children on the tree)
 Only packets arriving on the iif are accepted

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Deconstruction
 Prune messages are used to remove edges from the tree

 A router sends a prune message to its parent if it no longer

receives IGMP messages from its LANs and no refresh
messages from other routers.

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Rendezvous Point (RP)
 Each multicast group G has a router known as the rendezvous
point (RP).
• The RP is the root of the shared tree for group G.
• We also call this tree the RP tree (RPT).
• Every router must know the RP for every group G.
• In some cases, the same router is used as the RP for every
group.

 There is only one RP for any group G at any time.

 RP(G) denotes the unicast IP address of the RP of G

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 Overall Steps

 A receiver sends an IGMP message to its designated router (DR)

wishing to join group G

 DR joins the shared tree rooted at RP(G)

• Its join message indicates (*,G), i.e., wishes data from all
sources

 Sources send data messages to RP(G) via encapsulation

• Data is encapsulated and routed to RP(G)
• RP(G) then decapsulates it and forwards it along the tree

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Source RP(G)

Tree Tree
edges edges

R1 R2 R3

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Shortest Path Trees
 The shortest path tree (SPT) for a source S of a group G
• is a tree rooted at the designated router for S
• for every receiving host R,
• the path between R and S is the shortest path from R to S.
• Similarly defined if we used cost rather than hop count
• However, if we use cost, the optimum path from S to R
may not be the optimum path from R to S.

 The SPT is built as before (root is S)

 BOTH the SPT of S and the Shared Tree will co-exist.
 Who should join the SPT of S?

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RP(G) joins SPT of S
 If the traffic from S is high, the RP(G) may wish to avoid
encapsulation/decapsulation
• The paper claims this is done upon RP(G) receiving the first
encapsulated message from S.
 To do so, RP(G) joins the SPT of S
• I.e., RP(G) simply becomes a receiver of SPT of S
• If SPT of S does not exist, it is built on the fly, i.e. RP(G) is
the first receiver
 Thus, RP(G) receives data messages from S through SPT of S
• RP(G) then forwards these messages along the shared tree

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PIM-SM Example

Step 1: Building shared tree

Join G for S
Step 2: Source sending to
S RP RP
Step 3: Stop encapsulation

R1 R2 R3

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Receiver Joins the SPT of S
 Due to traffic load, the DR of a receiver may decide to join the
SPT of S.
• I.e., S  DR will have the optimum path from DR to S
 Thus, the DR will be connected to two trees.
• Shared Tree
• SPT of S
 Once messages arrive along the SPT of S, DR PRUNES itself
from the Shared Tree
 This prune is selective only for the source S
• Data from other sources will indeed be received via the
shared tree

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PIM-SM Example

Step 1: Building shared tree

Join G for S
Step 2: Source sending to
S RP RP
Step 3: Stop encapsulation
Step 4: Switch to SPT
Step 5: Prune shared tree

R1 R2 R3

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How does a source sends its data?
 The Register message is one means by which packets from a
source S reach the root (RP) of the shared tree for group G.
• Register messages are sent as unicast PIM messages
addressed to the RP.
• The payload of a Register message is a complete multicast
packet (headers and all).
• The RP
• decapsulates the Register message,
• forwards the packet along the shared tree
• Sends a join message to S along the path to S.

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How do routers discover sources?
 A source S for group G is “discovered” by a router when the
router receives a packet from S addressed to group G.
• A router discovers a directly connected source S when
the router receives a packet from S on the same LAN and
addressed to group G.
• The router must encapsulate and register with RP(G)
• A router discovers a distant (non-connected) source
when the router receives a packet from the source along
the shared tree for group G.
• The router may choose to join the SPT of S.

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