An Overview of Multicast Routing

An Overview of Multicast Routing
In the recent days, with the technological progression and improvement, the concept of multicast
routing has also acquired an important place. In fact, multicasting is nothing, but is associated with the
concept of group membership. Basical y, multicast datagram's are sent to a group, and the group
receives the datagram's. An address is identified, and routing is done to the fol owing address, as per the
needs. There is also a source host, and this host is responsible for sending the datagram's to a group
address.
In the case of multicast routing, you wil also find the concept of destination hosts, and these hosts can
inform the local router that they are in need to join the group. There is a facility of intranet, which general y
performs the function of multicasting. With this facility, any number of hosts can send datagram's to the
group address and consequently, any host can also receive the datagram's from the group address,
irrespective of the location that has been al otted.
However, it is very essential that the hosts and the routers on the intranet can support the multicast
routing, so that the facility can be availed, as a whole. It is the hosts that are responsible for using the
internet group management protocol, so that the group membership can be established. On the other
hand, the routers can use multicast protocols for routing, so that the multicast data can be forwarded.
Thus, being wel aware of the entire concept of this routing is very essential to make it completely
functional.

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