IP multicast operational network management: design, challenges and experiences

Multicast is a natural enabler for carrying high bandwidth multimedia broadcasts and seminars on IP networks. Despite the increased need for IP multicast, its commercial deployment has not been widespread. The lack of appropriate network management tools for IP multicast has proven to be a major barrier in its deployment. In this article, we survey the currently available multicast management tools and discuss why they are insufficient. We describe the requirements of an operational multicast management platform and present 'mmon', a multicast network management system that we have built, aimed primarily for use by network engineering and operations center personnel. Mmon is currently used at HP and more than 100 other sites to manage the multicast networks. We discuss some of the challenges and our experiences with designing, implementing and deploying the system.