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The Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) snooping software is a portable implementation of the IGMP snooping mechanism. The software snoops IGMP v1, v2, and v3 packets and populates the Multicast-MAC forwarding entries used by the switching NPU or silicon. IGMP snooping implementation enables Layer2 switches in the network, to snoop into IGMP control protocol packets that are exchanged between downstream hosts and upstream L3 switches. By snooping those packets, the L2 switches generate the L2 MAC forwarding table that will be used for further switching sessions and regulate the multicast traffic from flooding the Layer2 segment of the network. The multicast traffic is allowed to fall through only on downstream ports where listeners are present. Reduces the time-to-Market for OEMs and VARs who wish to incorporate the IGMP snooping functionality into their Layer2 switching devices.

Last updated : June 13, 2006