VideoLAN VLC is available for free at http://www.videolan.org. You can use the VideoLAN VLC streaming how-to guide to set up a video stream. This setup uses a lengthy video file as input on the server, and sets the stream output setting to use the following values:
Protocol: RTP (Note this is RTP over UDP) Address: Port: 226.0.1.5:1234 Encapsulation method: MPEG TS Transcoding Video Codec: mp4v (MPEG-4) Transcoding Video Bitrate (kb/s): 1024 (this is equivalent to 1,048,576 b/s) Transcoding Audio Codec: vorb (Vorbis) Transcoding Video Bitrate (kb/s): 192 (this is equivalent to 196,608 b/s) Time-to-Live (TTL): 4
Using this setting, you can start the playback (multicast) as desired from the server. When it is started, you can view it using another instance of VLC with the Media Resource Locator:
udp://@226.0.1.5
This can also easily be set up by selecting Open Network Stream, and choosing UDP/RTP Multicast as the method with the 226.0.1.5 address. When this is done from the client host it generates an IGMP Join message to join the 226.0.1.5 multicast group, and subsequently the router begins sending the multicast out from the fe-1/1/3.0 interface.
As the router is configured with PIM, as the server begins multicasting, and as the client joins or leaves the multicast group, it is useful interesting to observe the changes in the output of the following commands:
show igmp interface show igmp group show pim interface show pim join detail show pim source detail show multicast route extensive (note stats Kbps) (note forwarding state = Pruned/Forwarding) show multicast rpf 192.168.0.2 show multicast rpf 192.168.2.2 show multicast usage show route table inet.1
In addition, you can observe the MDI statistics changing using the new Monitube commands presented in Command User Interface.