Looking Ahead

Of all the IP routing protocols examined in the two volumes of this book, the multicast protocols are the most unfamiliar to the most people. Although this chapter provides a reasonable overview of the five protocols and the relevant supporting protocols, it is by no means exhaustive. There is much more to IP multicast that cannot be covered within the confines of this book; for more extensive coverage, refer to "Recommended Reading."

Now that you have some understanding of how the five protocols work, Chapter 6 provides Cisco-specific examples of how to configure and troubleshoot IP multicast routing.

You can think of the protocols covered in this chapter as multicast IGPs. All the protocols operate within a single multicast domain. In Chapter 7, you examine the protocols used for inter-AS multicast routing.