How This Book Is Organized
This book is organized into six chapters that cover the following topics:
Chapter 1, “Interdomain Routing and Internet Multicast”: This chapter explains the fundamental requirements for interdomain multicast and the three pillars of interdomain design: control plane for source identification, control plane for receiver identification, and downstream control plane.
Chapter 2, “Multicast Scalability and Transport Diversification”: Transportation of multicast messages requires consideration of several factors, especially when cloud service providers do not support native multicast. This chapter introduces the key concepts of cloud services and explains the elements required to support multicast services.
Chapter 3, “Multicast MPLS VPNs”: Multicast VPNs provide the ability to logically separate traffic on the same physical infrastructure. Most service providers and many enterprise customers implement Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) so they can separate or isolate traffic into logical domains or groups, generally referred to as virtual private networks (VPNs). This chapter discusses the options for implementing multicast VPNs.
Chapter 4, “Multicast in Data Center Environments”: This chapter explains the use of multicast in the data center. Understanding the nuances of how multicast functions in myriad solutions is critical to the success of your organization. The goal of this chapter is to provide insight into the operation of multicast, using the most popular methods for data center implementation, including virtual port channel (VPC), Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN), and Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI).
Chapter 5, “Multicast Design Solutions”: This chapter examines several archetypical network design models. One of the models represents a specific network strategy that meets a specific commercial purpose—a trade floor. Another model is a general design for a specific industry, focusing on the deployment of multicast in a hospital environment. The intent of this chapter is to provide a baseline for each type of design as well as examples of best practices for multicast deployments.
Chapter 6, “Advanced Multicast Troubleshooting”: This chapter explains the basic methodology for troubleshooting IP Multicast networks.