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Re: Why does sending multicast UDP require a gateway?


On 2011-03-30, Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 10:33:09PM +0000, Grant Edwards wrote:
>> Somebody I work with has spent the last three days trying to send UDP
>> multicast packets using eCos and the FreeBSD network stack.
>> 
>> After quite a bit of trial-and-error we've discovered that you can't
>> send UDP multicast packets without configuring a valid gateway
>> address.
>> 
>> That seems broken to me.
>> 
>> What are you supposed to do if you're on a strictly local network that
>> doesn't _have_ a gateway?  [That is the case for many of our products.]
>
> Hi Grant
>
> In the Linux world you have to do something like:
>
> ip route add 224.0.0.0/4 dev eth0
>
> before multicast works. The kernel has no idea which interface to
> send the multicast packet out, unless you add a route like this.

It's being sent via a socket that's bound to a specific interface, so
I wouldn't think that would be a problem.

> Maybe in the BSD world, instead of defining the interface directly,
> you give the local IP address on the interface?
>
> Maybe this helps:
>
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/network-routing.html
>
> In the example routing table is:
> 224              link#1             UC          0        0

I can see that if you're sending from an unbound socket, you might
want a way to specify which interface to use for sending multicast
packets.  But without such a route, the only thing that makes sense to
me is "send it out all of them".

Perhaps one work-around would be to always configure a "multicast
route" for 224.0.0.0/28.

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! I need to discuss
                                  at               BUY-BACK PROVISIONS
                              gmail.com            with at least six studio
                                                   SLEAZEBALLS!!


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