[Xorp-users] Multicast Routing on Windows

[Bruce Simpson]

Martin Goldstone wrote:
> ...
> From this point I decided to go back to Routing and Remote Access, and 
> had it running doing OSPF while I tried to convince Xorp to just do 
> the multicast stuff.  Sadly all 3 versions complained about not having 
> an RTMv2 pipe available.
...
> It's at this point I hit what seems to be my final roadblock, and 
> sadly it wasn't in the release notes (though I've since found it in 
> the build notes): Multicast routing is not supported on Windows.

Correct... and that should be in the release notes, given that a binary 
build was distributed.

But it is largely academic given the lack of ongoing Windows support. No 
organisation has had sufficient interest to make use of it, as far as I 
know, since Microsoft's original interest.

>
> So at the moment, I'm stuck.  I'm wondering if it's possible to just 
> get Xorp to handle the PIM stuff on it's own, though to be honest, I 
> don't know enough about multicast to know if that would be sufficient.
>
> Does anyone have any ideas about a solution to this mess?  Aside from 
> using a different operating system, of course, as I'm stuck with 
> Windows on this one.

I'm afraid you're out of luck. There are a number of things in the 
Windows port which couldn't be finished, either due to lack of time or 
lack of information. Multicast forwarding is just very different in the 
Windows environment.

If a business case could be made for reopening Windows support on an 
ongoing basis, then I daresay something could be done about the lack of 
multicast support. However, this seems unlikely, given that Windows is 
not part of XORP, Inc.'s development focus at all.

thanks,
BMS