[AG-TECH] Multicast beacon questions

[Marty Hoag]

"John A. Greenfield" wrote:
> 
> I have was assuming it was my sagnvideo.ahpcc.unm.edu beacon code getting
> confused. I rebooted, do you still see this now? If it is not fixed, it
> could be a bizarre mcast config problem too.
> 
> John
> 

   Here is the output of the "show ip mroute 233.2.171.1 count"
on the Abilene IPLS router at about 14:21 CDT (1921 UTC, 10/24/01):

  Source: 129.24.244.132/32, Forwarding: 15433/9/87/6, Other: 1/0/0
  Source: 129.24.244.135/32, Forwarding: 301898291/364/90/266, Other:
825/0/0

Note that this has seemed to add a beacon (at normal rates) for UNM
(ag-video.ahpcc.unm.edu according to the dns ptr entry) but the
sagnvideo still seems high.

   I agree that having a constant rate of 10 packets/second doesn't 
scale very well if every multicast enabled site in the world was
transmitting in this one group.  I think the original design probably
envisioned many different beacon servers and groups (e.g., one for
a single beacon from each AG node, etc.).  In fact, there have been
others (Internet2, Great Plains Network) but folks have sort of 
converged on using the AG beacon group as "the" group.

   There are some issues with the traffic patterns.  I suspect through
that one packet per second might still be enough to keep the traffic
"persistent".  I've also thought there should be a way for beacons to
shift groups each hour to mimic the join features (right now the beacon
traffic is different because you seldom join or register).  For the
AG I suppose there could be a beacon group for each virtual venue and
when you enter a brm (beacon resource manager) could move your beacon
on your node there.  ;-)  I'm not sure what the answer is.  Right now
there are other tools too but the beacon seems to be fairly easy to 
use to see if you are "ok" or not.

   Marty