[Xorp-hackers] PIM and IGMP

[Pavlin Radoslavov]

> Hello all.  I am a newbie to this project and looking for some info.  I am a
> developer at Motorola and just recently got screwed over by a vendor on some
> protocol stacks and licensing issues.  As opposed to fighting them on it, I
> proposed to find an open source project and try and integrate the software
> into our code.
> Our project is basically a DSLAM chip that we need to run PIM and IGMP on.
> We will be running Linux with the 2.6.10 kernel.  One question I have is is
> PIM, IGMP, and the route manage stable enough to attempt this?  Can PIM and

I believe they are reasonably stable with one small caveat (see
below).

Currently the lastest release is 1.1, but there are several bug
fixes in the lastest PIM-SM code in CVS so in general I recommend to
use the lastest CVS code.
However, in the last 1 week or so we did a number of changes to the
rtrmgr and in the process we probably introduced few bugs that are
in process of being fixed.

Therefore, I'd recommend to start playing with the 1.1 release code
to get feeling how things are working (or with, say, 2 weeks old CVS
code). By the time you are ready to start integrating XORP with your
product we should have fixed and tested the rtrmgr code in CVS and
then you can use the lastest CVS code (or the forthcoming 1.2
release).
In general, I would highly recommend you that in your final product
you use the lastest post-1.1 code from CVS because of the PIM-SM bug
fixes (which usually are not noticeable, but should be applied if
you are to build a high quality product).

> IGMP be seperated from the rest of the functionality or would I have to load
> everything and just not start them?  Anyone think of any big pitfalls of
> going down the XORP route?

In general, the IGMP and PIM-SM modules are logically independent
from the rest of XORP, and you can run them without running, say,
static_routes, RIP or BGP.
If you configure only the multicast-related modules in XORP, then
the rtrmgr will start only the relevant modules: the FEA/MFEA, RIB,
MLD/IGMP, PIM-SM and FIB2MRIB.

The only pitfall that comes to mind is that currently we don't have
IGMPv3/MLDv2 implemented in case you need it (we have only IGMPv1,2
and MLDv1). Implementing IGMPv3/MLDv2 is on our roadmap
(http://www.xorp.org/roadmap.html), but we are not there yet.

If you decide to use XORP, please let us know if you run into any
issues so we can try to fix them.

Pavlin