mrouted

I recently had the opportunity to test out the mrouted project, a DVMRP multicast routing daemon. Essentially, mrouted allows a UNIX workstation to function as a DVMRP multicast router with tunnel support, even when crossing non-multicast-aware routers.

The implementation of the DVMRP multicast routing protocol is seamless and easy to use. However, I came across a few issues with previous versions. For instance, before this release, IGMP was prone to reporting membership in local-only groups, which was problematic during fast leave operations. In addition, IGMP would sometimes reset timers for the wrong interface, leading to a loss of connectivity.

Thankfully, this new release comes packed with improvements and fixes for many of these issues. The kernel hash function has been improved, eliminating the possibility of a cache maintenance panic. There have also been significant modifications to resource allocation when sending upcall, which ensures proper handling of failure.

Another notable improvement in this release is the squashing of endian-ness bugs. Many of these issues were found in mrouted, and while there may be more to come, the development team has taken significant steps to address the problems.

Lastly, multicast traceroute could send a reply on a disabled interface in previous releases. This issue has been fixed in this version, making mrouted a more reliable choice for DVMRP multicast routing. Overall, I had a positive experience testing this software and would recommend it to anyone who needs a reliable DVMRP multicast routing solution.