Subject: Multicasting on an AGS+

From: Ian Reddy <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 1997 08:43:22 -0800 (PST)

We tried turned on multicasting on our AGS+ this morning and it
blew it away. We're running 11.0(4). It seemed like the router
quickly ran out of memory. Though there is multicasting traffic
on some of the segments attached to the AGS+ all we did was
"ip multicast-routing" and then "ip pim sparse-mode" on a couple
of the dozen interfaces. No tunnel or DVMRP connection (that we 
know of - does an mrouted host on one of the segments count?).

Anyone have some insights? Are we toast using 11.0(4)? The 11.1(x)
and higher releases aren't available for the AGS+...sigh. The AGS+
has 16MB RAM and had 7MB free before turning on the multicast options.

(If there are better places for cisco-specific(?) questions and
multicast-rather-than-mbone-oriented questions please let me know.)

Thanks in advance for any advice you may be able to provide.

-- 
  Ian Reddy, Senior Systems Consultant  E-mail:    [email-masked]
  Academic Computing Services, AD1021              [email-masked]
  Simon Fraser University               Telephone: (604) 291-3936
  Burnaby, B.C. Canada V5A 1S6          Fax:       (604) 291-4242

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From: "John M. Zwiebel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 1997 09:27:11 -0800

>multicast-rather-than-mbone-oriented questions please let me know.)

[email-masked]

In the mean time, the version you are using (11.0.4) is quite old and there
have been a number of changes and bug fixes.  The latest is 11.0(13.3).  You
may want to upgrade.
	 gs3-k-mz.110-13.3

z

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From: Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 1997 18:26:38 +0100 (MET)

> multicast-rather-than-mbone-oriented questions please let me know.)

No, cisco people really *love* bashing of their products on this list,
it's got a long tradition ;-))

We're using 11.0 on AGS+ since early beta-test (n-years ago ?) phases 
especially for multicasting and had relatively few problems. Over the time
cisco fixed lots of multicasting bugs in the software and i remember that my
last CsC was fixed in 11.0-13, so i can only urgendly recommend you to
upgrade to such a current version.

Be aware though, that even with multicast route-cache enabled on the AGS+,
the multicast fan-out is only in the area of 2MB/sec to 3MB/sec, so
you should take those numbers into consideration when calculating the
available multicast bandwidth on your interfaces. For MBone traffic i
never experienced problems, because my largest configuration is 12*Ether +
FDDI, and with 512 Kbps limit on MBone traffic even a fan-out to all
interfaces is only a slight pain to the AGS+, but doesn't hurt badly. If
you overload the box, there shouldn't be memory holes either, but it
wouldn't surprise me if it doesn't run stable.

As for the configuration it is probably wise to keep the AGS+ as a
PIM-cloud internal router with any amount of sparse or dense-mode
interfaces, but no tunnels or DVMRP neighbours. Those connections
are much better handled with newer IOS releases available on the newer
Cisco platforms.

If you do intend to run this box for some time on, then you should
immediately update to a current 11.0 release and if you still experience
problems, report them directly to your Cisco-TAC. Bugfixes are still done for
11.0.

best regards
	Toerless

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From: "John M. Zwiebel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 1997 13:34:01 -0800

>We're using 11.0 on AGS+ since early beta-test (n-years ago ?) phases 

PIM densemode beta began during the summer of '94.  So, PIM has been in
the IOS for 3 years.  

z