TF-NGN
TF-NGN

IP multicast from user perpective

Home page: http://www.cesnet.cz/tf-ngn/multicast

Multicast monitoring

Géant uses Multicast Beacon developed at NLANR. This systems is based on active probes: a number of agents (beacons) send periodically messages to a configured multicast group and collect, for each active beacon, data on packet loss, delay, jitter and reordered/duplicated packets. Data samples are forwarded (via IP unicast) to the beacon server which takes care about their presentation in a form of matrices showing the current value of a given parameter for all sender/receiver pairs. The results can be observed through either a special BeaconViewer application or simply a standard web browser.

The previous version (0.63) of Multicast Beacon software was written entirely in Java while the server for the current version (0.8) has been rewritten in Perl.

Two independent Multicast Beacon structures have been set up by DANTE for the purposes of multicast monitoring and diagnostics:

  1. Géant backbone beacon grid consists of a fixed set of beacons running directly at each Géant PoP. This is intended for routine monitoring by Géant NOC. Please DO NOT attempt to join this grid. The URL of its beacon server is http://beaconserver.geant.net:9999/.
  2. Géant public beacon grid is open to agents in NRENs or elsewhere for the purposes of end-to-end multicast performance monitoring. The URL of the beacon server is http://beaconserver.geant.net:19999/.

Our project members also contributed to the Multicast Beacon development:

Ladislav Lhotka <lhotka@cesnet.cz>
Last modified: Fri Feb 15 16:38:47 CET 2002