NAME

mrouted.conf —

mrouted configuration file

SYNOPSIS

/etc/mrouted.conf

DESCRIPTION

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 loopback 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 configuration is likely better replaced by more direct (GRE) tunnels (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
router-alert <off | on>
igmp-query-interval SEC
igmp-robustness COUNT
phyint local-addr [
altnet network/mask-len
] [
boundary boundary-name | scoped-addr/mask-len
]

[
igmpv1 | igmpv2 | igmpv3
]

[
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 significant. The “#” character marks start of a comment to end of line.

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.

Some multicast routers, and some IGMP snooping switches, do not support IP options like Router Alert, which is enabled in mrouted by default. Use router-alert off to disable this IP option. Regardless of this setting, mrouted always calculates the IP payload offset based on the IP header length value of ingressing DVMRP and IGMP frames.

The igmp-query-interval setting controls the IGMP query interval used when this router is elected querier on a LAN. It can be set to any value in the range 1-1024, inclusive. However, it is not recommended to go below 10 sec. Default: 125.

The igmp-robustness setting controls many aspects of IGMP timers. It can be any value in the range 2-10, inclusive. The query-response-interval used below is hard-coded to 10 sec in mrouted:

Group Membership Timeout: Number of seconds before mrouted determines that there are no more members of a group on a LAN. Formula: (igmp-robustness x igmp-query-interval) + (1 x query-response-interval)
Other Querier Timeout: Number of seconds before mrouted determines there is no longer an elected querier on the LAN. Formula: (igmp-robustness x igmp-query-interval) + (0.5 x query-response-interval)
Last-member Query Count: Number of group-specific queries sent before mrouted assumes there are no local members of a group. The number of queries is equal to the value of the robustness variable. However, mrouted currently hard-codes this to 2

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 subnet with the altnet keyword. mrouted supports all IGMP versions and defaults to use IGMP v3. Use igmpv2 or igmpv1 to force compatibility modes on the phyint.

NOTE: All phyint commands must precede tunnel commands.

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 defaults to 500 kbps on tunnels, and 0 (unlimited) on physical interfaces.
threshold: is the minimum IP time-to-live required for a multicast datagram 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 decrements 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

FILES

/etc/mrouted.conf: Main configuration file.

AUTHORS