Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)

FreeBSD Manual Pages

  
 
  

home | help
MROUTED(8)		     System Manager's Manual		      MROUTED(8)

NAME
     mrouted -- IP multicast routing daemon

SYNOPSIS
     mrouted [-fhp] [-c FILE] [-d [[LEVEL[,LEVEL,...]]]

DESCRIPTION
     mrouted  is an implementation of the Distance-Vector Multicast Routing Pro-
     tocol (DVMRP), an earlier version of which is specified in  RFC  1075.   It
     maintains	topological  knowledge	via  a	distance-vector routing protocol
     (like RIP, described in RFC 1058), upon which  it	implements  a  multicast
     datagram forwarding algorithm called Reverse Path Multicasting.

     mrouted  forwards a multicast datagram along a shortest (reverse) path tree
     rooted at the subnet on which the datagram originates.  The  multicast  de-
     livery  tree  may	be thought of as a broadcast delivery tree that has been
     pruned back so that it does not extend beyond those subnetworks  that  have
     members of the destination group.	Hence, datagrams are not forwarded along
     those  branches  which  have  no  listeners of the multicast group.  The IP
     time-to-live of a multicast datagram can be used to limit the range of mul-
     ticast datagrams.

     In order to support multicasting among subnets that are separated by  (uni-
     cast) routers that do not support IP multicasting, mrouted includes support
     for  "tunnels",  which  are  virtual  point-to-point links between pairs of
     mrouted daemons located anywhere in an internet.  IP multicast packets  are
     encapsulated  for transmission through tunnels, so that they look like nor-
     mal unicast datagrams to intervening routers and subnets.	 The  encapsula-
     tion is added on entry to a tunnel, and stripped off on exit from a tunnel.
     By  default,  the	packets are encapsulated using the IP-in-IP protocol (IP
     protocol number 4).  Older versions of mrouted tunnel use IP  source  rout-
     ing,  which  puts a heavy load on some types of routers.  This version does
     not support IP source route tunneling.

     The tunneling mechanism allows mrouted to establish a virtual internet, for
     the purpose of multicasting only, which is independent of the physical  in-
     ternet, and which may span multiple Autonomous Systems.  This capability is
     intended  for  experimental  support of internet multicasting only, pending
     widespread support for multicast routing by the regular (unicast)	routers.
     mrouted suffers from the well-known scaling problems of any distance-vector
     routing protocol, and does not support hierarchical multicast routing.

     mrouted  handles  multicast  routing  only; there may or may not be unicast
     routing software running on the same machine as mrouted.  With the  use  of
     tunnels,  it  is  not necessary for mrouted to have access to more than one
     physical subnet in order to perform multicast forwarding.

OPTIONS
     This program follows the usual UNIX command line syntax, with long  options
     starting with two dashes (`--').  The options are as follows:

     -h, --help
	     Print a help message and exit.

     -M, --missing-ok
	     If  an  interface	in /etc/mrouted.conf does not exist yet, print a
	     warning and continue.  Useful with VPN, PPP and other  dynamic  in-
	     terfaces.	 However,  mrouted must still be restarted to start lis-
	     tening on such interfaces, if they did not exist when  mrouted  was
	     started.

     -N, --no-interfaces
	     Change  mrouted default behavior and assume all interfaces are dis-
	     abled   unless   explicitly   enabled   with   phyint   enable   in
	     /etc/mrouted.conf

     -D, --startup-delay=DELAY
	     Wait  for	DELAY seconds before applying the routes. This delay en-
	     ables to exchange routes before starting to forward multicast pack-
	     ets and therefore eliminate transient problems at startup,  at  the
	     cost of a momentary black hole. Defaults to 10 seconds.

     -f, --foreground
	     Run in foreground, do not detach from the calling terminal.

     -c, --config=FILE
	     Specify	 an	alternative    configuration	file,	 default
	     /etc/mrouted.conf

     -d, --debug[=LEVEL[,LEVEL...]
	     By default, mrouted detaches from the invoking terminal.	If  this
	     option  is specified, mrouted it runs in foreground of the starting
	     terminal and responds to signals.	If -d is given with no argument,
	     the debug level defaults to igmp, cache, interface, groups, prunes,
	     routes and peers.

	     Regardless of the debug level, mrouted always  writes  warning  and
	     error  messages  to  the  system log daemon.  Debug levels have the
	     following effects:

		   packet
			 Debug inbound/outbout packets
		   prunes
			 Pruning operations, or pruned routes
		   routes
			 Routing messages
		   rtdetail
			 Detailed routing information
		   peers
			 Neighbor gossip
		   cache
			 Debug routing cache
		   timeout
			 Debug timeouts
		   interface
			 Show interface (VIF) debug messages
		   groups
			 Debug group memberships
		   mtrace
			 Multicast traceroute information
		   igmp  Debug IGMP messages
		   icmp  Debug ICMP messages
		   rsrr  Debug RSRR messages

     -p      Start mrouted in a non-pruning mode.  This was previously	used  in
	     routers  for  test  purposes only.  However, this is no longer sup-
	     ported and this option is only kept for compatibility reasons.

     -r, --show-routes
	     Show state of VIFs and multicast routing tables. This command sends
	     SIGUSR1 to a running mrouted, waits for the dump  file  to  be  up-
	     dated, and then displays the result on stdout.

CONFIGURATION
     In  many  cases you do not need to configure mrouted.  It configures itself
     automatically to forward multicast  on  all  multicast-capable  interfaces,
     i.e.,  interfaces that have the IFF_MULTICAST flag set, excluding the loop-
     back interface.  It locates other DVMRP capable routers directly  reachable
     via those interfaces.

	   mrouted
		 will  not  start  with less than two enabled virtual interfaces
		 (VIFs).  A VIF is either a physical multicast-capable interface
		 or a tunnel.
	   mrouted
		 will log a warning if all of its VIFs are tunnels; such a  con-
		 figuration  is likely better replaced by more direct (GRE) tun-
		 nels (i.e. eliminate the middle man).

     To override the default settings, for example to to  add  tunnel  links  to
     other   DVMRP   routers,	configuration	commands   may	 be   placed  in
     /etc/mrouted.conf.  There are five types of commands:

	   cache_lifetime <SEC>

	   name boundary-name | scoped-addr/mask-len

	   phyint local-addr [altnet network/mask-len]
		 [boundary boundary-name | scoped-addr/mask-len]
		 [disable | enable]
		 [metric <1-31>]
		 [rate_limit kbps]
		 [threshold ttl]

	   pruning [off | on]

	   tunnel local-addr remote-addr
		 [boundary boundary-name | scoped-addr/mask-len]
		 [metric <1-31>]
		 [rate_limit kbps]
		 [threshold ttl]

     The file format is free-form: whitespace (including newlines) is  not  sig-
     nificant.	 The boundary option to all commands can accept either a name or
     a network boundary; the boundary and altnet options  may  be  specified  as
     many times as necessary.

     The  cache_lifetime  is  a  value that determines the amount of time that a
     cached multicast route stays in kernel before timing  out.   The  value  of
     this  entry  should lie between 300 (5 min) and 86400 (1 day).  It defaults
     to 300.

     The name option assigns names to boundaries to make configuration easier.

     The phyint command can be used to disable multicast routing (or  enable  if
     mrouted  is started with all interfaces disabled) on the physical interface
     identified by local IP address local-addr, or to  associate  a  non-default
     metric  or  threshold  with the specified physical interface.  The local IP
     address local-addr may be replaced by the interface name (e.g. le0).  If an
     interface is attached to multiple IP subnets, describe each additional sub-
     net with the altnet keyword.  All phyint commands must precede tunnel  com-
     mands.

     The pruning command is provided for mrouted to act as a non-pruning router.
     This  is  no longer supported and the configuration option is only kept for
     compatibility reasons.

     The tunnel command can be used to establish a tunnel link between local  IP
     address  local-addr  and  remote IP address remote-addr, and to associate a
     non-default metric or threshold with that tunnel.	 The  local  IP  address
     local-addr may be replaced by the interface name (e.g. le0).  The remote IP
     address remote-addr may be replaced by a host name, if and only if the host
     name has a single IP address associated with it.  The tunnel must be set up
     in the mrouted.conf files of both routers before it can be used.

	   boundary
		 allows  an  interface	to  be	configured  as an administrative
		 boundary for the specified scoped address.   Packets  belonging
		 to  this  address  will not be forwarded on a scoped interface.
		 The boundary option accepts either a name or a boundary spec.
	   metric
		 is the "cost" associated with sending a datagram on  the  given
		 interface  or tunnel; it may be used to influence the choice of
		 routes.  The metric defaults to 1.  Metrics should be	kept  as
		 small	as  possible,  because	mrouted cannot route along paths
		 with a sum of metrics greater than 31.
	   rate_limit
		 allows the network administrator to specify a certain bandwidth
		 in kbps which would be allocated to multicast traffic.  It  de-
		 faults  to  500  kbps on tunnels, and 0 (unlimited) on physical
		 interfaces.
	   threshold
		 is the minimum IP time-to-live required for a	multicast  data-
		 gram  to  be forwarded to the given interface or tunnel.  It is
		 used to control the scope of multicast datagrams.  (The TTL  of
		 forwarded  packets is only compared to the threshold, it is not
		 decremented by the threshold.	Every  multicast  router  decre-
		 ments the TTL by 1.)  The default threshold is 1.

     In  general,  all	DVMRP routers connected to a particular subnet or tunnel
     should use the same metric and threshold for that subnet or tunnel.

EXAMPLE CONFIGURATION
     This is an example configuration for a mythical multicast router at  a  big
     school.

     #
     # mrouted.conf example
     #

     # Name our boundaries to make it easier.
     name LOCAL 239.255.0.0/16
     name EE 239.254.0.0/16

     # le1 is our gateway to compsci, don't forward our
     # local groups to them.
     phyint le1 boundary EE

     # le2 is our interface on the classroom net, it has four
     # different length subnets on it.
     # Note that you can use either an IP address or an interface name
     phyint 172.16.12.38 boundary EE
	    altnet 172.16.15.0/26
	    altnet 172.16.15.128/26
	    altnet 172.16.48.0/24

     # atm0 is our ATM interface, which doesn't properly
     # support multicasting.
     phyint atm0 disable

     # This is an internal tunnel to another EE subnet.
     # Remove the default tunnel rate limit, since this
     # tunnel is over Ethernets.
     tunnel 192.168.5.4 192.168.55.101
	    metric 1 threshold 1 rate_limit 0

     # This is our tunnel to the outside world.
     # Careful with those boundaries, Eugene.
     tunnel 192.168.5.4 10.11.12.13
	    metric 1 threshold 32
	    boundary LOCAL boundary EE

SIGNALS
     mrouted responds to the following signals:

     HUP   Restarts  mrouted.	The  configuration file is reread when SIGHUP is
	   received.
     INT   Terminates execution gracefully, i.e., by sending  good-bye	messages
	   to all neighboring routers.
     TERM  The same as INT.
     USR1  Dumps the internal routing tables to /var/run/mrouted/mrouted.dump.
     USR2  Dumps the internal cache tables to /var/run/mrouted/mrouted.cache.
     QUIT  Dumps  the internal routing tables to stderr (only if mrouted was in-
	   voked with a non-zero debug level).

     For convenience, mrouted writes its process ID to /var/run/mrouted.pid when
     it has completed its start up and is ready to receive signals.

FILES
     /etc/mrouted.conf		     Main configuration file.
     /var/run/mrouted/mrouted.dump   Internal routing table, created and updated
				     on SIGUSR1
     /var/run/mrouted/mrouted.cache  Internal cache table, created  and  updated
				     on SIGUSR2
     /var/run/mrouted.pid	     Pidfile  (re)created by mrouted daemon when
				     it has started up and is ready  to  receive
				     commands.
     /proc/net/ip_mr_cache	     Holds active IPv4 multicast routes (Linux).
     /proc/net/ip_mr_vif	     Holds  the  IPv4 virtual interfaces used by
				     the   active   multicast	routing   daemon
				     (Linux).

EXAMPLES
     The routing table looks like this:

     Virtual Interface Table
      Vif  Local-Address		    Metric  Thresh  Flags
       0   36.2.0.8	 subnet: 36.2	       1       1    querier
			 groups: 224.0.2.1
				 224.0.0.4
			pkts in: 3456
		       pkts out: 2322323

       1   36.11.0.1	 subnet: 36.11	       1       1    querier
			 groups: 224.0.2.1
				 224.0.1.0
				 224.0.0.4
			pkts in: 345
		       pkts out: 3456

       2   36.2.0.8	 tunnel: 36.8.0.77     3       1
			  peers: 36.8.0.77 (2.2)
		     boundaries: 239.0.1
			       : 239.1.2
			pkts in: 34545433
		       pkts out: 234342

       3   36.2.0.8	tunnel: 36.6.8.23      3       16

     Multicast Routing Table (1136 entries)
      Origin-Subnet   From-Gateway    Metric Tmr In-Vif  Out-Vifs
      36.2				 1    45    0	 1* 2  3*
      36.8	      36.8.0.77 	 4    15    2	 0* 1* 3*
      36.11				 1    20    1	 0* 2  3*
      .
      .
      .

     In this example, there are four VIFs connecting to two subnets and two tun-
     nels.  The VIF 3 tunnel is not in use (no peer address).  The VIF 0 and VIF
     1	subnets  have  some groups present; tunnels never have any groups.  This
     instance of mrouted is the one responsible for sending periodic group  mem-
     bership  queries  on  the	VIF  0	and  VIF  1 subnets, as indicated by the
     "querier" flags.  The list of boundaries indicate the scoped  addresses  on
     that  interface.  A count of the number of incoming and outgoing packets is
     also shown at each interface.

     Associated with each subnet from which a multicast datagram  can  originate
     is  the  address of the previous hop router (unless the subnet is directly-
     connected), the metric of the path back to the origin, the amount	of  time
     since we last received an update for this subnet, the incoming VIF for mul-
     ticasts  from that origin, and a list of outgoing VIFs.  "*" means that the
     outgoing VIF is connected to a leaf of the broadcast  tree  rooted  at  the
     origin, and a multicast datagram from that origin will be forwarded on that
     outgoing  VIF  only  if  there are members of the destination group on that
     leaf.

     mrouted also maintains a copy of the kernel forwarding  cache  table.   En-
     tries are created and deleted by mrouted.

     The cache tables look like this:

     Multicast Routing Cache Table (147 entries)
      Origin		 Mcast-group	 CTmr  Age Ptmr IVif Forwvifs
      13.2.116/22	 224.2.127.255	   3m	2m    -  0    1
     >13.2.116.19
     13.2.116.196
      138.96.48/21	 224.2.127.255	   5m	2m    -  0    1
     >138.96.48.108
      128.9.160/20	 224.2.127.255	   3m	2m    -  0    1
     >128.9.160.45
      198.106.194/24	 224.2.135.190	   9m  28s   9m  0P
     >198.106.194.22

     Each  entry  is  characterized by the origin subnet number and mask and the
     destination multicast group.

     The 'CTmr' field indicates the lifetime of the entry.  The entry is deleted
     from the cache table when the timer decrements to zero.  The 'Age' field is
     the time since this cache entry was originally created.   Since  cache  en-
     tries  get  refreshed  if traffic is flowing, routing entries can grow very
     old.

     The 'Ptmr' field is simply a dash if no prune was	sent  upstream,  or  the
     amount  of  time  until the upstream prune will time out.	The 'Ivif' field
     indicates the incoming VIF for multicast packets from that origin.

     Each router also maintains a record of the number of prunes  received  from
     neighboring routers for a particular source and group.

     If  there	are  no members of a multicast group on any downward link of the
     multicast tree for a subnet, a  prune  message  is  sent  to  the	upstream
     router.  They are indicated by a "P" after the VIF number.

     The  Forwvifs field shows the interfaces along which datagrams belonging to
     the source-group are forwarded.

     A "p" indicates that no datagrams are being forwarded along that interface.
     An unlisted interface is a leaf subnet with no members  of  the  particular
     group on that subnet.

     A "b" on an interface indicates that it is a boundary interface, i.e. traf-
     fic  will not be forwarded on the scoped address on that interface.  An ad-
     ditional line with a `>' as the first character is printed for each  source
     on the subnet.

     Note that there can be many sources in one subnet.

SEE ALSO
     map-mbone(8), mrinfo(8), mtrace(8), pimd(8), smcroute(8)

     S.  Deering, Multicast Routing in Internetworks and Extended LANs, Proceed-
     ings of the ACM SIGCOMM '88 Conference.

AUTHORS
     David Waitzman, Craig Partridge,  Steve  Deering,	Ajit  Thyagarajan,  Bill
     Fenner,  David Thaler, and Daniel Zappala.  With contributions by many oth-
     ers.

FreeBSD ports 15.quarterly	January 17, 2013		      MROUTED(8)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=mrouted&sektion=8&manpath=FreeBSD+Ports+15.1.quarterly>

home | help