Application sheet

Multicasting

Consulting Important note

Instructor The material contained in this publication must be treated as confidential
Phone and may only be used within the Bosch Group.
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Update The material in the publication may only be disclosed to persons who are
Date 14-05-2007 not employed in the Bosch Group with our express permission. Our express
Version 1 permission is also required if you wish to make copies or sketches etc. of
Versionnumber 1 the publication, in part or in whole.
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Table of Contents

Table of Contents 2

1. Multicasting 3

1.1 General 3
1.2 How to apply a valid IP Multicast group address? 3

1.2.1 Multicast versus Unicast 4

1.3 Example : Bosch encoder configuration 5

1.4 Streaming 7
1.5 Why and when is this streaming option used? 7

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1. Multicasting

1.1 General

IP Multicast is a technique for one to many communication over an IP infrastructure. It scales to a

larger receiver population by not requiring prior knowledge of how many receivers there are.
Multicast utilizes network infrastructure efficiently by requiring the source to send a packet only
once, even if it needs to be delivered to a large number of receivers.

A key concept in IP Multicast is the IP Multicast group address (224.0.0.0 - 239.255.255.255).

An IP Multicast group address is used by sources and receivers to send and receive content.
Sources use the group address as the IP destination address in their data packets. Receivers use
this group address to inform the network that they are interested in receiving packets sent to that
group. For example, if some content is associated with group 239.1.1.1, the source will send data
packets destined to 239.1.1.1. Receivers for that content will inform the network that they are
interested in receiving data packets sent to the group 239.1.1.1. The receiver "joins" 239.1.1.1.
The protocol used by receivers to join a group (or leave a group) is called the Internet Group
Management Protocol or IGMP.

In common Bosch video applications every Multicast stream is preceded by a RCP+ registration.
This will prevent that video is streamed to decoders that are not Bosch devices. Later on we will go
more in detail on this topic.

1.2 How to apply a valid IP Multicast group address?

In the Web browser underneath the tab Multicasting, change the first zero of the default Multicast
address 0.0.0.0 in to a one. (Rename 0.0.0.0 into 1.0.0.0). The encoder itself will respond with a
unique Multicast address based on the device MAC address.
Every encoder has a unique MAC address. Based on this unique address the device is able to
apply a unique Multicast address.
Note: if a valid Multicast address ( in the range 224.0.0.0 - 239.255.255.255) is applied in the web
interface, the device will not reply a Multicast address based on the devices MAC address. This is
useful if you do not want to use the Multicast network address based on the devices MAC address.
This could be the case when the Multicast address based on the devices MAC address is already
used by another non Bosch device.

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encoder In case the multicast ad-

dress is changed to 1.0.0.0
the encoder will apply a
unique multicast address in
the web interface

1.2.1 Multicast versus Unicast

(Multi)-Unicast Multicast
Encoder Encoder

The schematic shows the difference between Unicast and Multicast.

As you can see, Unicast stresses the network more than Multicast does, but maybe more
important it stresses the performance of the encoder much more.

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1.3 Bosch encoder configuration

Decoder 1
Encoder
Decoder 2

IGMP v3

The switch in this example supports the IGMP protocol. This protocol takes care of the source to
destination registration. It sends out approximately every 30 seconds (adjustable in the switch) a
query a so called membership report. This membership report asks the devices if they also support
IGMP and if they want to join the multicast group.

If an encoder is set to Multicasting via applying a valid multicast address, then the switch will be
notified via the IGMP protocol. The switch remembers this particular Multicast- address and all the
data-streams acquired by the decoders from this encoder will be multiplied by the switch. Note:
you cannot set Multicast on a decoder, he can only request for a Multicast stream via Bosch RCP+
protocol. The next example will explain this topic in more detail.

1.3.1 Example:

If a decoder (e.g. decoder 1) makes a video request to the encoder, first an RCP+ connection will
be established between the encoder and the decoder.

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1 RCP+ request from dec. to

enc.

Decoder 1
Encoder
Decoder 2

IGMP v3
2 3
Encoder streams video to switch Decoder requests video from
switch via RCP+
IGMP membership reporting

The RCP+ protocol communicates over the network and the decoder requests a video stream from
the encoder. The encoder replies to the decoder you can find my video stream at Multicast ad-
dress x.x.x.x . At this moment the Encoder already streams its video to the switch. The decoder
makes a request to the switch for the video stream of the encoder at the replied multicast address
x.x.x.x. and the video will be streamed from the switch to the decoder.

Note:
Although Multicast Video uses UDP, the amount of multicast connections is limited by a maximum
number of RCP+ registrations (via TCP) that accompanies the UDP connection.
Due to that effect it is possible to make a connection between an encoder and maximum 50 de-
coders simultaneously (1 RCP+ registration), or a connection between an encoder and maximum
25 web-pages simultaneously (2x RCP+ registration). Or a combination of these two types of con-
nections.

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1.4 Streaming

In the Web interface of the encoder there is also an option called streaming. If this option is
checked via selecting the checkbox, the encoder will continuously send the multicast stream to the
switch. This means that the Multicast connection is not preceded by a RCP+ connection. The en-
coder streams always all data to the switch. The switch in return, sends this data to all ports, with
the result that the switch will flood.
Caution has to be taken!

1.5 Why and when is this streaming option used?

Streaming is used if a device, which is not a Bosch device and therefore doesn’t make use of the
RCP+ protocol, has to make use of a multicast stream of a Bosch device.
In this case it is not possible to establish a RCP+ connection because it is not supported by this
third party device.
To prevent the “flooding” of the switch when the streaming option is selected, an intelligent switch,
which makes use of IGMP multicast filtering, has to be used. Now all the ports were the multicast
stream does not need to be streamed to, are be blocked for multicast streams.

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