MROUTED(8)              OpenBSD System Manager's Manual             MROUTED(8)

NAME
     mrouted - IP multicast routing daemon

SYNOPSIS
     mrouted [-c config_file] [[-d debug_level]] [-p]

DESCRIPTION
     mrouted is an implementation of the Distance-Vector Multicast Routing
     Protocol (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
     delivery 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
     multicast datagrams.

     In order to support multicasting among subnets that are separated by
     (unicast) 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 normal unicast datagrams to intervening routers and subnets.
     The encapsulation 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 us-
     ing IP source routing, 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 physi-
     cal internet, and which may span multiple Autonomous Systems.  This capa-
     bility is intended for experimental support of internet multicasting on-
     ly, pending widespread support for multicast routing by the regular (uni-
     cast) routers.  mrouted suffers from the well-known scaling problems of
     any distance-vector routing protocol, and does not (yet) support hierar-
     chical 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.

INVOCATION
     If no -d option is given, or if the debug level is specified as 0, mrout-
     ed detaches from the invoking terminal. Otherwise, it remains attached to
     the invoking terminal and responsive to signals from that terminal. If -d
     is given with no argument, the debug level defaults to 2. Regardless of
     the debug level, mrouted always writes warning and error messages to the
     system log daemon. Non-zero debug levels have the following effects:
           1       all syslog'ed messages are also printed to stderr.
           2       all level 1 messages plus notifications of "significant"
                   events are printed to stderr.
           3       all level 2 messages plus notifications of all packet ar-
                   rivals and departures are printed to stderr.

     Upon startup, mrouted writes its pid to the file /var/run/mrouted.pid.

CONFIGURATION
     mrouted automatically configures itself to forward on all multicast-capa-
     ble interfaces, i.e., interfaces that have the IFF_MULTICAST flag set
     (excluding the loopback "interface"), and it finds other mrouted directly
     reachable via those interfaces.  To override the default configuration,
     or to add tunnel links to other mrouted configuration commands may be
     placed in /etc/mrouted.conf (or an alternative file, specified by the -c
     option).  There are four types of configuration commands:

           phyint <local-addr> [disable] [metric <m>]
                 [threshold <t>] [rate_limit <b>]
                 [boundary (<boundary-name>|<scoped-addr>/<mask-len>)]
                 [altnet <network>/<mask-len>]

           tunnel <local-addr> <remote-addr> [metric <m>]
                 [threshold <t>] [rate_limit <b>]
                 [boundary (<boundary-name>|<scoped-addr>/<mask-len>)]

           cache_lifetime <ct>

           pruning <off/on>

           name <boundary-name> <scoped-addr>/<mask-len>

     The file format is free-form; whitespace (including newlines) is not sig-
     nificant.  The boundary and altnet options may be specified as many times
     as necessary.

     The phyint command can be used to disable multicast routing on the physi-
     cal interface identified by local IP address <local-addr>, or to associ-
     ate a non-default metric or threshold with the specified physical inter-
     face. The local IP address <local-addr> may be replaced by the interface
     name (e.g., le0).  If a phyint is attached to multiple IP subnets, de-
     scribe each additional subnet with the altnet keyword.  Phyint commands
     must precede tunnel commands.

     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 asso-
     ciate 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 be-
     fore it can be used.

     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 pruning option is provided for mrouted to act as a non-pruning
     router. It is also possible to start mrouted in a non-pruning mode using
     the -p option on the command line. It is expected that a router would be
     configured in this manner for test purposes only. The default mode is
     pruning enabled.

     You may assign names to boundaries to make configuration easier with the
     name keyword.  The boundary option on phyint or tunnel commands can ac-
     cept either a name or a boundary.

     The 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.

     The 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 thresh-
     old.  Every multicast router decrements the TTL by 1.)  The default
     threshold is 1.

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

     The rate_limit option allows the network administrator to specify a cer-
     tain bandwidth in Kbits/second which would be allocated to multicast
     traffic.  It defaults to 500Kbps on tunnels, and 0 (unlimited) on physi-
     cal interfaces.

     The boundary option allows an interface to be configured as an adminis-
     trative 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.

     mrouted will not initiate execution if it has fewer than two enabled
     vifs, where a vif (virtual interface) is either a physical multicast-ca-
     pable interface or a tunnel.  It will log a warning if all of its vifs
     are tunnels; such an mrouted configuration would be better replaced by
     more direct tunnels (i.e., eliminate the middle man).

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 every time this

           signal is evoked.
     INT   terminates execution gracefully (i.e., by sending good-bye messages
           to all neighboring routers).
     TERM  same as INT
     USR1  dumps the internal routing tables to /var/tmp/mrouted.dump.
     USR2  dumps the internal cache tables to /var/tmp/mrouted.cache.
     QUIT  dumps the internal routing tables to stderr (only if mrouted was
           invoked with a non-zero debug level).

     For convenience in sending signals, mrouted writes its pid to
     /var/run/mrouted.pid upon startup.

EXAMPLE
     The routing tables look 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
     tunnels.  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 membership 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 no. 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
     multicasts 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 entries 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 up-
     stream 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 are no members of the particular group on that sub-
     net. A "b" on an interface indicates that it is a boundary interface,
     i.e., traffic will not be forwarded on the scoped address on that inter-
     face.  An additional 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.

FILES
     /etc/mrouted.conf
     /var/run/mrouted.pid
     /var/tmp/mrouted.dump
     /var/tmp/mrouted.cache

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

     DVMRP is described, along with other multicast routing algorithms, in the
     paper "Multicast Routing in Internetworks and Extended LANs" by S. Deer-
     ing, in the Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM '88 Conference.

AUTHORS
     Steve Deering, Ajit Thyagarajan, Bill Fenner

OpenBSD 2.9                       May 8, 1995                                5
