Impact of Multicast steaming video on a network

[maniac]

I'm currently working on a project of distributing the output from our Digital Signage to other screens around the school. After looking at hardware solutions which were silly money, I've been experimenting with VLC Player outputing a multicast UDP stream, and I've had a lot of success with it. It does exactly what I want, and we can use old laptops we have as 'receivers' as it were, and put them anywhere we want.

 

Now obviously using a multicast stream impacts on the whole network, and while I've not noticed any issues throughout messing around with it, I was wondering what the impact on our network might be if we have this running all day everyday?

 

I Had also looked at streaming it as HTTP output, where each machine establishes its own connection to the server, but the problem with this is if the stream stops, then the player just sits there until you re-start it manually, which could end up being a pain if we end up with a lot of them round the school. With the multicast stream, the player stays there listening until the stream re-starts, and then just carrys on, obviously a big advantage.

 

Anyone able to offer me any advise if it's a wise idea pushing a multicast stream onto my network or not?

 

Cheers,

 

Mike.

[Geoff]

A multicast stream will use less bandwidth than HTTP streams, as there is only one data stream going across your LAN. Additionally, if you have clever managed switches they should be able to deal with this multicast traffic in such a way that it is not sent to clients that didn't ask for it.

[maniac]

A multicast stream will use less bandwidth than HTTP streams, as there is only one data stream going across your LAN. Additionally, if you have clever managed switches they should be able to deal with this multicast traffic in such a way that it is not sent to clients that didn't ask for it.

 

I thought that may be the case, just wanted to confirm my thoughts! A majority of our switches are HP 2626 and 2524, so I'm pretty sure they should be able to filter multicast packets. Any idea what this feature is actually called in the switch thou??

 

Cheers,

 

Mike.

[Guest Guest]

I thought that may be the case, just wanted to confirm my thoughts! A majority of our switches are HP 2626 and 2524, so I'm pretty sure they should be able to filter multicast packets. Any idea what this feature is actually called in the switch thou??

 

Cheers,

 

Mike.

 

^ IGMP Multicast filter. Or something like that. Its really obviuous what it is. IIRC its under Device Features.

[m25man]

I'm currently working on a project of distributing the output from our Digital Signage to other screens

 

So am I !

 

62 IP TV units and one of these

 

I do have 16 pairs of 10GBe Fibre and 6 HP5400zl's to do it with though:cool:

[Geoff]

^ IGMP Multicast filter. Or something like that. Its really obviuous what it is. IIRC its under Device Features.

 

Indeed, that is correct. Also, here are the docs on said feature.

 

ProCurve Networking by HP - Information Library

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/networking/software/AdvTraff-Oct2005-59908853-Chap04-IGMP.pdf