Zen Internet Support Forum

I'm on AOL at the moment, so don't have access to the streams, but I'm guessing compared to normal digital TV their not that brilliant. From my reading on the net, the digial streams use at least 2Mbps, while the multicast trials have a bit rate of 360Kbps. But that is only my guess from what I have read.

I've got a question aswell, I'm thinking of joining Zen when my AOL contract is up, and I am interested in using the multicast streams, as I cannot get terrestrial or cable digital TV where I live. I'm wondering, does the Billion BiPAC 7202GR2 work with the multicast streams as it does seem to have an IGMP proxy, and it seems a bargain at £50. If not, would any reccomend the Speedtouch 585?
Thanks

I bought a BT Voyager 2110 today and so far I've been able to get the radio streams working but not the video.

Is there any way we can tell if the video streams are online?

*Edit* The radio streams have stopped working now.

Well i can confirm i have multicasting working on a cisco 837 Version 12.3(14)T i`m not going to post a config yet i`m trying to figure out why it takes so long for the link to be setup...

just some more info i can only get it working in a routed setup not unsing nat only the realplayer streams seem to work for me

Edited due to a stupid mistake by me

Cisco 837 config


!
ip multicast-routing
!
interface Ethernet0
 description Connection to LAN
 ip pim sparse-dense-mode
 ip igmp helper-address udl Dialer0
!
!
interface Dialer0
 description DSL Dialer.
 ip pim sparse-dense-mode
 ip igmp unidirectional-link
!
!


Ethernet 0 can be NAT inside or a routed port i have proved both to work...

I have so far only got the real player streams to work, some times it will come in on the first attempt other times I need to press play again after getting a multicast server error.

Zyxel 650HW-31 working with basically the same instructions as the PDF.  Firewall is turned off at the moment but could probably be put back with the right rules.

This is to report that it's WORKING on a ZyXEL Prestige 643 router.

This router is similar to the newer 660 series routers already documented.  You need to use the Telnet interface to select Multicast=IGMP-v2 in Menu 3.2 (which is easy to get to) and in Menu 11.3 (which isn't).  Unless you have fiddled with the filters, this router will happily pass the required UDP traffic without further fiddling.

In other words, just follow Steps 3 and 4 (Pages 7-10) of the instructions at http://www.redsquirrel.plus.com/ZyXEL-P662HW-Multicast.pdf

This is Zen, so we don't need stinking SUA or NAT.

For the record, for a Linux client, the kernel needs IP multicasting (IP_MULTICAST), but neither IP multicast routing (IP_MROUTE) nor IP tunneling (NET_IPIP) is needed. You'll need a suitable route and a suitable hole in netfilter, for example:

route add -net 224.0.0.0 netmask 240.0.0.0 dev eth0
iptables -A INPUT -d 224.0.0.0/4 -j ACCEPT

Until I corrected the iptables netmask (it's /4, just like James said, dammit) I was getting 'This server is configured to support only multicast connections' from Realplayer.  Hope this free clue helps someone.

Has anyone managed to get multicast through a Linksys BEFSR41?  It has an option 'Enable Multicast Passthrough' which is checked, but I have no luck trying to view the multicast streams.  My setup is:

Zen <-> DLink DSL300G+ <-> BEFSR41 <-> LAN

I'm using a dynamic public IP and NAT if that makes any difference.

If I try the 'Watch in this site' options, I get a web page with no video playing.  If I try the 'Watch with Windows Media 9' option, WMP gets launched, tries to connect to media, and times out.

I do notice significantly increased activity on my WAN link after selecting either option (purely evidenced by the WAN Act. LED on my router), which suggests that my PC is correctly joining the  multicast group, but it doesn't seem to be reaching the LAN.  This makes me wonder if I need to enable some UDP forwarding on the Linksys as well, but that would seem to defeat the purpose...

I plan to try snooping LAN traffic with Ethereal tonight, so any pointers on what to look for would be appreciated.  As I understand it I should be seeing the following if all was working as it should be:

1. An IGMP Membership Report from my PC to 224.0.0.1, with the appropriate Group Address in the body;

2. UDP packets to the appropriate Group Address from the server;

3. Occasional IGMP Membership Queries to the appropriate Group Address from the server 9I'm assuming here that the router will purely be passing these through rather than proxying responses on the PCs' behalf...)

Any other hints from anyone?

TIA

 

---

--
pd

Did a bit more messing around, but still no Linky luck.

Ethereal shows that an IGMP Membership Report is sent out correctly, but only when I lauch the separate WMP window (ie not the 'watch in this sitelink).  Another twist is that Windows XP is sending IGMP v3 Reports by default -- are Zen's routers running v3?

[I know there was a previous exchange between mixt and James Sweet in which Jamespointed out that hosts should respond with a v2 Report in response to a v2 Query -- however, in the case of initially joining a multicast group, the Membership Report is unsolicited and so will be using the host's default version.]

Although I see the Membership Report go out, I still don't see anything coming back.  Note that I don't know if the Linksys is actually sending the Report upstream, although I have no reason to believe it would block an outgoing request.

In case the router is blocking unsolicited UDP packets, I've explicitly set up port forwarding to send all incoming UDP packets on ports 0-65535 to the machine I'm testing on.  Still no luck.

After some Googling, I found out how to change XP to use IGMP V2.  I've done this, but behaviour is exactly the same:  Membership Report goes out (v2 this time, and still only for the separate WMP window), nothing comes back.

I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that the Linksys doesn't pass multicast, regardless of the configuration option to do so.  Next step is to bypass the Linky and connect my PC directly to my D-Link modem.  I'll report back when I've tried that.

---

--
pd

Confirmed working with Bt Voyager 2110. However you have to find a stream that is currently upright and working. BBC1 worked happily last night.

I've tried it on both my Cisco 837 (12.3(8)T IP/FW/Plus 3DES IOS) and 877 (12.4(4)T1 Advanced IP Services IOS), and both work.
I used Ethernet0 in place of FastEthernet0, and Vlan1 on the 877.

On the other hand, it doesn't work on my Linksys WRT54GS running Sveasoft Talisman Basic 1.1.

Can anyone confirm that the streams are working i havent had multicast working for a few days now...

Yes, they are still working.

I've collated all the recent posts regarding working/unworking hardware into the Sticky post at the top of the forum (thanks to all!)

Any other posts regarding hardware that does/doesn't work with multicast are very welcome!

---

Kindest regards,

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

chrish:

Works fine with US Robotics Wireless MAXg ADSL Gateway Router

- Chris

 

Its not working on mine! and its all default settings

 

 

Post to confirm the following router works:   D-Link G624M MIMO

Didnt work off the bat for me, may do for others, I had to switch proxying back and forth between interfaces, then that sorted it, here is what I did. (running latest firmware.)

Telnet to the CLI, then return after each line:

igmp set upstreaminterface iplan
igmp set forwardall false
igmp set upstreaminterface rfc1483-0

After this you can confirm the igmp proxying is set in the correct direction by doing the following from the CLI:

console enable
ip device list

This will list your interfaces, and loads of associated info, one will be your lLAN interface (iplan) another the WAN interface (rfc1483-0), the last is local loopback, and can be ignored.

Under the iplan interface, you should see a section:  Multicast mode: IGMP Proxy Downstream
and under rfc1483-0 interface:                                Multicast mode: IGMP Proxy Upstream

The IGMP membership field will remain empty until you connect to a stream.

Works fine now in the external players, but the in browser media player not working for me in Firefox, will have to work on that !

Cheers
AFX_11