Zen Internet Support Forum

Well it's now working like a dream on my antiquated SpeedTouch PC internal pci card... I did note that Windows Firewall has started allowing UDP traffic on port 5050 for Windows Media Player recently so I reckon that's what stopped it working last time.

Alcatel Speedtouch PC internal pci card - supports multicast ! *does a victory cheer*

I've been trying to get this working with my Linksys WAG54GX2 without much success. I've enabled IGMP Proxy and UPnP, I can see the IGMP messages in Ethereal but that's about all I get..

Anyone had any success with this router?

Thanks,

Paul

Well, something interesting I've found with all the streams is that if you start one playing and just close the player without stopping it, the router will carry on broadcasting for some time until it thinks there's no clients. Stands to reason, as it's a multicast with no ACKs from clients to say they are still there.

On the same note, the H.264 stream sucks, or at least does for me. I've tried it in the latest VLC builds - the latest official on my Dual-Core Athlon 64 4400+ with 2Gb of RAM, and on my Mac Mini Core Duo 1.66 with 1Gb using the latest nightly build for OSX (there's no official intel build yet). In both cases, I'd get a few frames of decent video, then a smeary mess. The windows VLC player would whinge it was missing codecs, whilst the OS X version would just whinge about everything but play anyway. There's no universal binary for Real Player yet, so I have yet to try two at once. I'll have to comandeer another PC in the house to do that

That behaviour sounds about right to me, although ACKS dont really apply, as we are talking UDP streams:

IGMP v2 has two ways of notifying the upstream router that there are no longer any hosts on an interface interested in the stream according to my perusal of the RFC.

The first method (also used by IGMP v1) is simply to stop sending IGMP membership reports in response to the IGMP enquiry messages that the Zen gateway router periodically sends. I think its after 3 enquiries go unanswered then it removes your interface from the route for that GDA (multicast group destination address)

The 2nd method is for the host to transmit an IGMP membership leave packet to 224.0.0.2 (all multicast routers) to inform them you are no longer interested in the stream. At that point you will immediately get a membership enquiry transmitted back to you, and assuming no hosts on your interface respond with reports your interface will be dropped from the stream.

I assume pressing the stop button of your player causes the membership leave to be transmitted, but if you just close it without pressing stop this doesnt get sent, and the stream doesnt stop being sent to your interface until 3 IGMP enquiries have gone unanswered.

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Kindest regards,

James Sweet
http://www.zen.co.uk

Ah yes... UDP no ACKs... I remember that from my CCNA now

I've found getting this working very interesting though. I can see it having major implications in the future for various ISPs as it is such a powerful way to deliver content, but there are certain 'gotchas' in the form of the continuing stream. Stands to reason though when you consider that if I close my player, somebody else might still be watching, so they don't want it to bin the connection.

I was mightily impressed with the fact that I was downloading a torrent, browsing the web, and other background noise (IRC, MSN etc) and the stream was playing perfectly. I never have a lot of luck with streams in general - most will stop at some point or stutter, but the Real streams have worked really well. I'm certainly impressed.

I suppose the next step for me is seeing it work at work - I work for a JANET-connected university, so it'd be fun to see how it runs there.

has the gateway for the rochdale LLU been enable for the bbc multicast

cheers

I found that I had to disable DoS attack protection for the WAN interface on my Zywall 35 in order for these multicast streams to work. The router seemed to be detecting the vast number of inbound packets as an attack of some kind and then dropping them. It looks like the packets are arriving fragmented (1480 bytes, rather than the full 1500) - don't know if that is at all related to the DoS attack prevention being triggered.

I had to configure two devices for igmp proxy support: the Zywall 35 (doing NAT), and also the ADSL modem sitting in front of the Zywall (a SpeedTouch 546 in routed IP mode). I followed the instructions provided by Zen for the SpeedTouch. This worked, but doesn't seem entirely reliable. I notice that the SpeedTouch firmware (5.4.0.11) has support for a full blown multicast routing table as well as an igmp proxy. For the Zywall it was basically the same as explained by Dave for his Prestige 661: enable IGMPv2 for LAN and WAN interfaces in the web GUI, then create 3 firewall rules (permit IGMP for WAN-to-WAN, permit IGMP for WAN-to-LAN, permit UDP port 5050 for WAN-to-WAN), but as explained above I also had to disable DoS attack prevention on the WAN interface.

Luckily I have snort sensors on either side on the Zywall and was able to watch the effect of each change with tcpdump running on those interfaces.

I find that the streams usually fail to connect when I first try to view them. It takes a little while for the IGMP membership to filter through the various devices so that the modem starts receiving the traffic, and the media players usually timeout before this happens. If I retry connecting to the stream it will often work the 2nd or 3rd time. This can be a bit annoying.

Yes it has.

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Kindest regards,

James Sweet
http://www.zen.co.uk

Solwise SAR600e

Works fine with just IGMP enabled. Under Advanced tab - choose multicast and tick the radio buttons "Enable IGMP Multicast" and your connection

Streams not working in my browser (that might be because it's Opera) but all work just fine in standalone players Realplayer and WMP9

Added to the list - thanks!

Keep em coming

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Kindest regards,

James Sweet
http://www.zen.co.uk

Just got your response. I have reconfigured my router as per the instructions in the url, but to no avail.

I have always been able to see the following in my syslogs
Mar 23 22:57:08.153: %SEC-6-IPACCESSLOGRP: list 110 permitted igmp 62.3.82.18 (Dialer1 ) -> 224.0.0.1, 2 packets

I also see the following
Mar 23 23:20:26.823: IGMP(0): Helper Report for group 239.255.255.250 to 82.70.154.150 for UDL Dialer1
Mar 23 23:20:26.827: IGMP(0): Forward Report for group 239.255.255.250 down UDL Ethernet0

Many thanks for the help

How do I get the web address across to media player. I seem to be able to play the broadcast when i open up media player on it's own rather than on the mini screen withing the main website. Trouble is it seems to be stuck on News 24.

 

What ports should I put into media player options screen?

Works fine with US Robotics Wireless MAXg ADSL Gateway Router

- Chris

 

 

Thanks Chris

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Kindest regards,

James Sweet
http://www.zen.co.uk

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