[nsp] multicast questions

[Charles Sprickman]

Hi,

I've got a few questions about multicast, mostly Cisco, but there's some
other issues that perhaps some of you have dealt with.

First issue, does anyone know if RBE (used for bridged DSL circuits coming
in on an ATM line) passes multicast?  Meaning, does it look like a LAN to
multiple hosts in the same subnet that are all bridged?  From what I can
see so far it seems not, but it would be very helpful if someone could
confirm that.

The second issue is more generic, and I apologize for bringing this to
-nsp, but I have to imagine some of you have done this before.

I need to make multicast "work" for a group of 10 DSL lines.  I thought
this would be simple; just bridge all of them using RBE and be done with
it.  The server is Window Media server on W2K Server.  It seems it will
not allow any multicast stations to be defined unless you enable the W2K
routing services and setup IGMP.  However, if you do this, the stream is
not available on the "local" all-hosts or all-routers IPs; it's off in
it's own little range.  So that complicates things.

So now I'm at a loss.  The multicast support on DSL CPE routers seems a
bit dodgy, and for the most part completely undocumented by the vendor
(Netopia and Zyxel are the choices).  And since I don't know what RBE does
with multicast, I may need a router at all sites.  Argh.  Any pointers to
how to setup the Cisco that terminates all these connections to handle
this scenario?

I've had little luck finding a good high-traffic multicast list,
especially one that will even touch a question that veers into the windows
world.

Any help at all is appreciated, even a pointer to another good list.

Thanks,

Charles

--
Charles Sprickman
spork at inch.com