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 to its deployment. In this paper 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 we have built, aimed primarily for use by engineering and operations personnel. Mmon has been tried by over 200 sites and is currently used at HP to manage the multicast network. We discuss some of the challenges and our experiences with designing, implementing, and deploying the system.