Chapter 10

CSC465 – Computer Networks

Spring 2004 Internet Group
Dr. J. Harrison Management Protocol
(IGMP)
These slides were produced almost entirely from material by
Behrouz Forouzan for the text “TCP/IP Protocol Suite (2nd
Edition)”, McGraw Hill Publisher

Multicasting
Position of IGMP in the network layer
• Processes may have to send the same message to
a large numbers of receivers simultaneously
– Example: Video-on-demand
– Informing multiple stockbrokers about changes to a
stock price
– IGMP is necessary but not sufficient for multicasting
– IGMP is a companion to the IP protocol

CONTENTS
10.1
• GROUP MANAGEMENT
• IGMP MESSAGES
• IGMP OPERATION GROUP
• ENCAPSULATION MANAGEMENT
• IGMP PACKAGE

1
 Multicasting and Routing Multicasting and Routing
• To support multicasting there needs to be routers • IGMP protocol gives the multicast routers info
about the membership status of hosts (routers)
capable of routing multicast packets connected to the network.
• Routing tables must be updated using a • A multicast router may receive thousands of
multicasting routing protocol multicast packets every day for different groups
• IGMP is not a multicasting routing protocol • If a router has no knowledge about the
• IGMP manages group membership membership status of the hosts it must broadcast
all of the multicast packets (excess traffic)
• Group membership: hosts and routers and the
groups they are “interested” in (subscribe to) • Better to maintain list of groups in the network
for which there is at least one “loyal” member
• ICMP helps the multicast router create and
update the group lists related to each interface

IGMP is a group management 10.2

protocol. It helps a multicast router IGMP v2
create and update a list of loyal
members related to
MESSAGES
each router interface.

IGMP Message Format

IGMP Message Types

Groupid (multicast address of the group) in the “special

query” and “membership” and “leave” reports (0 in
general query)
MRT defines amt of time available to answer query (0 in
reports)
Checksum is calculated over the 8-byte message

2
 IGMP Operation
• IGMP operates locally, i.e., within a network
• For each group there is only one router connected
10.3 to the network that has the duty of distributing the
multicast packets destined for that group
IGMP
• A host has “membership” if one of its processes
OPERATION receives receives multicast packets from some
group
• A router has “membership” means that there is a
network attached to some other interface that
receives multicast packets for the group

IGMP Operation Joining a Group - Host

• R is distributing router
• A host or router can join a group
• R1 & R2 are multicast routers • A host receives requests from processes to join a
• Possibly receive packets from R group
• Forward to other networks • If no previous request from another process, a
membership report message is sent
• Otherwise, no membership report need be sent as
the host already receives multicast packets for
this group

Joining a Group - Router Membership report

• A router also maintains a list of groupids that
show membership for the networks connected to
each interface
• If a multicasting router receives a membership
report from a device attached to an interface for a
network where there was not already interest, the In IGMP, a membership report
router will issue a membership report message to is sent twice,
a device on the network that supplies the one after the other.
multicast packets for this group
• Router acts like host but group list is much
broader (accumulation of all loyal members that
are connected to its interfaces)

3
 Leaving a Group Leaving a Group (con’t)
• There must be a mechanism for a device to report
• There must be a mechanism for a device to report that it no longer wishes to have membership in a
that it no longer wishes to have membership in a group
group • When a multicasting router receives a leave
• When a host sees that no process is interested in a report on an interface it cannot assume that all
devices are disinterested in membership, just the
specific group, it send a leave report.
device that sent the leave report
• When a router determines that none of the • The router must send a special query message
networks connected to its interfaces is interested that includes the groupid (multicast address)
in a specific group, it sends a leave report about • The router then waits for membership reports; if
that group none arrive within the time interval the router
purges the the group from its list

Leave report
Monitoring Membership
• Hosts and routers use membership and leave
reports to join and leave groups
• However these messages are not enough
– Consider the case where a host is taken offline before
it can send its leave report
– The multicast router will never receive a leave report
• A multicast router is responsible for monitoring
all of the hosts and routers on a LAN to see if
they wish to continue their membership in a
group
• The general query message is issued periodically

General Query Message Example 1

Note: General Query message does not define a specific group

A query message was received at time 0; the

random delay time (in tenths of seconds) for
each group is shown next to the group
address. What report messages will result?

4
 Example 1 (con’t) Example 1 (con’t)

Time 12: The timer for 228.42.0.0 in host A Time 30: The timer for 225.14.0.0 in host A
expires and a membership report is sent, which is expires and a membership report is sent, which is
received by the router and every host including received by the router and every host including
host B which cancels its timer for 228.42.0.0. host C which cancels its timer for 225.14.0.0

Example 1 (con’t) Example 1 (con’t)

Time 50: The timer for 251.70.0.0 in host C Time 70: The timer for 230.43.0.0 in host A
expires and a membership report is sent, which is expires and a membership report is sent, which is
received by the router and every host. received by the router and every host including
host A which cancels its timer for 230.43.0.0.

Example 1 (con’t)

10.4

ENCAPSULATION

Note that if each host had sent a report for every group in
its list, there would have been seven reports; with this
strategy only four reports are sent.

5
 Encapsulation of IGMP packet Mapping class D to Ethernet physical address

IP packet has value of 2 in

protocol field
TTL is 1
32-to-1 (many-to-one) mapping

Query msg destination: 224.0.0.1 (all systems on subnet) Hosts can receive frames for groups for which they don’t
Membership report destination: multicast address of relevant group subscribe
Host must check IP addresses and discard packets
Leave report: 224.0.0.2 (all routers on subnet)

Tunneling
Technique applicable when no physical multicast support
Emulate physical multicast support
Multicast packet encapsulated within unicast packet 10.5
IGMP
PACKAGE

Group table
IGMP
package

State: Free, Delaying, Idle

Reference Count: Number of processes interested