Multicast/Broadcast Mode
If your network supports packet multicasting, you can configure the multicast method that the controller uses. The controller can perform multicasting in one of two modes:
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Unicast mode: In this mode, the controller unicasts every multicast packet to every access point associated to the controller. This mode is inefficient but might be required on networks that do not support multicasting.
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Multicast mode: In this mode, the controller sends multicast packets to a CAPWAP multicast group. This method reduces overhead on the controller processor and shifts the work of packet replication to your network, which is much more efficient than the unicast method.
Note
We recommend that you use the unicast method only in networks where 50 or fewer APs are joined with the controller.
When you enable multicast mode and the controller receives a multicast packet from the wired LAN, the controller encapsulates the packet using CAPWAP and forwards the packet to the CAPWAP multicast group address. The controller always uses the management interface for sending multicast packets. Access points in the multicast group receive the packet and forward it to all the BSSIDs mapped to the interface on which clients receive multicast traffic. From the access point perspective, the multicast appears to be a broadcast to all SSIDs.
The controller supports Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) v1 snooping for IPv6 multicast. This feature keeps track of and delivers IPv6 multicast flows to the clients that request them. To support IPv6 multicast, you must enable Global Multicast Mode.
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When you disable the Global Multicast Mode, the controller still forwards the IPv6 ICMP multicast messages, such as router announcements and DHCPv6 solicits, as these are required for IPv6 to work. As a result, enabling the Global Multicast Mode on the controller does not impact the ICMPv6 and the DHCPv6 messages. These messages will always be forwarded irrespective of whether or not the Global Multicast Mode is enabled. |
Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) snooping is available to better direct multicast packets. When this feature is enabled, the controller gathers IGMP reports from the clients, processes them, creates unique multicast group IDs (MGIDs) from the IGMP reports after selecting the Layer 3 multicast address and the VLAN number, and sends the IGMP reports to the infrastructure switch. The controller sends these reports with the source address as the interface address on which it received the reports from the clients. The controller then updates the access point MGID table on the access point with the client MAC address. When the controller receives multicast traffic for a particular multicast group, it forwards it to all the access points, but only those access points that have active clients listening or subscribed to that multicast group send multicast traffic on that particular WLAN. IP packets are forwarded with an MGID that is unique for an ingress VLAN and the destination multicast group. Layer 2 multicast packets are forwarded with an MGID that is unique for the ingress interface.
When IGMP snooping is disabled, the following is true:
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The controller always uses Layer 2 MGID when it sends multicast data to the access point. Every interface created is assigned one Layer 2 MGID. For example, the management interface has an MGID of 0, and the first dynamic interface created is assigned an MGID of 8, which increments as each dynamic interface is created.
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The IGMP packets from clients are forwarded to the router. As a result, the router IGMP table is updated with the IP address of the clients as the last reporter.
When IGMP snooping is enabled, the following are true:
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The controller always uses Layer 3 MGID for all Layer 3 multicast traffic sent to the access point. For all Layer 2 multicast traffic, it continues to use Layer 2 MGID.
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IGMP report packets from wireless clients are consumed or absorbed by the controller, which generates a query for the clients. After the router sends the IGMP query, the controller sends the IGMP reports with its interface IP address as the listener IP address for the multicast group. As a result, the router IGMP table is updated with the controller IP address as the multicast listener.
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When the client that is listening to the multicast groups roams from one controller to another, the first controller transmits all the multicast group information for the listening client to the second controller. As a result, the second controller can immediately create the multicast group information for the client. The second controller sends the IGMP reports to the network for all multicast groups to which the client was listening. This process aids in the seamless transfer of multicast data to the client.
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If the listening client roams to a controller in a different subnet, the multicast packets are tunneled to the anchor controller of the client to avoid the reverse path filtering (RPF) check. The anchor then forwards the multicast packets to the infrastructure switch.
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The MGIDs are controller specific. The same multicast group packets coming from the same VLAN in two different controllers may be mapped to two different MGIDs.
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If Layer 2 multicast is enabled, a single MGID is assigned to all the multicast addresses coming from an interface.
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The maximum number of multicast groups supported per VLAN for a controller is 100.
This section contains the following subsections: