Aman Sinha wrote:
> Can anyone suggest a fast way to set up my machine as a multicast router ?

If you just want to send multicast in your 'small group' of machines on a
single subnet, you don't need a multicast router.  The multicast packets
sent by one will be visible to all machines on that subnet and the multicast
aware machines will make sense of them.

Older software versions in routers did not cope with (generic) multicast
packets.  Thus, mrouters were developed to provide a multicast backbone
(mbone) over the Internet.  The mrouters work by tunneling multicast IP
over unicast IP tunnels between mrouters.  Newer router software is now
taking over from mrouters.

If you want to communicate with other networks or subnets, you need either
a multicast aware router, or an mrouter tunnel to another mrouted.  There
is a global mailing list (mbone@isi.edu) where you could ask for an mbone
feed (i.e. another mrouter providing a tunnel to your mrouter).  The list
is split into regional sub-lists, but I'm afraid I don't know the list
name for the US.  There is probably already a feed into utexas.edu - I can
see 128.83.6.0/24 in the global dvmrp list, which is assigned to the Office
of Telecomms. Services at Austin - you could try asking them first.

J

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