IP multicast transport service

IP multicast (hereinafter also referred to as the IP multicast service) is a transport service that involves building a multicast traffic distribution tree within a domain for transmitting data to multiple destination interfaces from a single source interface via the IP protocol. This helps optimize bandwidth usage and reduce network congestion when the number of devices is large.

The root of the multicast traffic distribution tree is the service interface to which the traffic source is connected. The source service interface transmits traffic to the service interfaces to which subscribers are connected (subscriber interfaces). Subscriber interfaces can connect to multicast groups with a destination address in the IP address range 224.0.0.0/4 via the IGMPv2/v3 protocol.

Traffic is transmitted through the IP multicast transport service as Ethernet frames with an IP payload without additional encapsulation.