Cisco Technology, Inc.

Senthilkumar Krishnamurthy

Chickayya Naik

Toerless Eckert

Mouli Vytla

Venkateshwar Rao Pullela

Giovanni Meo

Shyamasundar S Kaluve

Karthikeyan Gurusamy

Sandeep Hebbani Raghavendra Rao

Ashwin Sampath

Disclosed are, inter alia, methods, apparatus, data structures, computer-readable media, and mechanisms for limiting unauthorized multicast sources. One or more access control lists are typically configured in a switching device to a state that denies forwarding of multicast packets with a particular host as its source. In response to a received multicast application admission-control message identifying the particular host, the one or more access control lists in the switching device are updated to allow multicast messages sent from the particular host to be forwarded. In one system, the received multicast application admission-control message is an Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) message. In response to the received multicast application admission-control message identifying the particular host, one system automatically adds one or more entries to the one or more access control lists to allow multicast traffic to be sent to and received from a next switching device leading to a corresponding multicast Rendezvous Point.

Limiting unauthorized sources in a multicast distribution tree

Efficient multicasting within a layer 2 network is provided. Participation by a layer 3 router is not required. The spanning tree created by common layer 2 networking protocols is exploited for multicast signaling and traffic handling.

Efficient multicast packet handling in a layer 2 network

A method and system for controlling admission of an end user to a multicast channel over a network implementing a source filtering protocol. Incoming packet traffic received by an edge router is snooped and, when a request to join a multicast channel is received, the traffic is analyzed. Any service policy associated with the traffic class is found and applied to packet traffic from the requesting user. The actions include accepting membership in a group associated with a multicast channel and pushing the packets to the end user. If the action is to deny membership, then the multicast packets are prevented from reaching the end user. In addition information is logged and may be used for billing purposes or for accumulating marketing or other such information. Also, the actions may be to limit the number of routing states, by denying admittance to a groups once a limit number of requests to join, or other such parameter, is reached. Such limiting will substantially prevent DOS attacks on a multicast router.

Admission control mechanism for multicast receivers

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Senthilkumar Krishnamurthy