Building the Case for Distributed Global Multicast Monitoring

摘要

Key to the utility of multicast is the correct operation of the various protocols. More importantly, these protocols must operate infrastructure-wide. Infrastructure-wide monitoring is necessary for effectively monitoring protocol operation. Consequently, monitoring is needed for efficient management and troubleshooting of multicast networks. In this paper we present results based on the analysis and comparison of multicast routing and source announcement data collected by our global monitoring system. This system, called Mantra, collects data from various important locations in the Internet multicast topology. Our final conclusion, and not one that can be drawn by looking at any individual router, is that there exists a fair amount of inconsistency between routers in what should be consistent global state.