Hello,
First off I am not too familiar with RouterOS but have used MikroTik PtP RF links as bridges for a few years. What I am now trying to figure out is multicast routing. I am trying to configure RouterOS to multicast route 10 streams to individual networks. I have one network that has the 10 streams on it and I need to send stream 1 to network 1, stream 2 to network 2, stream 3 to network 3, etc… Yes I wanted to just implement IGMP snooping (proxy?) to do this at the switch level with one network (VLAN) but I am not able to do this because one vendor’s equipment will not initiate IGMP messages at all.
I have been able to get this setup to work on a ProCurve layer-3 switch in my lab using RIP, 11 VLANS, PIM-Dense, and individual static-groups but I would like to get this to work on RouterOS. In my lab environment I have my interfaces configured (1 WAN - DHCP, 10 LAN - not routed or bridge, 1 LAN - management NATed to WAN). I have also created the PIM interfaces. This is where I am stuck, how to I create the static groups so say 227.1.1.1 goes to only interface 2 and 227.1.1.2 goes to only interface 3. If needed I can supply the commands I used on the ProCurve switch.
Thanks
Background of why I am doing this (if you want to read).
I am part of a TV translator group that serves a substantial geographic area with multiple TV translator sites. We all share the same “backbone” for the source of the TV channels. We transport 10 main ATSC channels from the headend receive site to our many translator sites. These channels were transported over analog microwave links. We are now transitioning to IP microwave links and have encoded the tv channels in multicast streams, 10 individual streams on the same VLAN (each channel has its own multicast IP). Where we still have analog microwave links we converted the streams back to RF using a media gateway. These media gateways can handle multiple transport streams (up to the limit of the 1 Gbps NIC) inbound and outbound, they can also mux the stream output to a RF modulator. This works good. We only VLAN the ports necessary for transport through the network to keep multicast flooding down. IGMP works well with these media gateway, join and leave messages show up in the logs of the switches at the translator sites.
The problem we are now seeing is with another vendors equipment. There purpose is to be an encoder for one translator, to receive a stream and then modulate an RF amplifier. The problem is they do not initiate a IGMP request for the programmed multicast stream. No IGMP messages in the switch’s logs from these devices. I can use VLC on a laptop to request the same stream fine on the same port. So the next step I have tried in a lab environment is to flood the ports on the VLAN with the streams on it but the NIC in the devices stop working due to a “broadcast” storm. These devices only want to have one stream (the one that they are configured for) sent to them on the NIC.