Multicast VLAN registration
 |
This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2011) |
Multicast VLAN Registration (MVR) is a protocol for Layer 2 (IP)-networks that enables multicast-traffic from a source VLAN to be shared with subscriber-VLANs. The alternative would be to use PIM or a similar protocol to route the traffic through a Layer 3- network. MVR is typically used for IPTV-like services and is therefore usually only available on enterprise-level switches. Many manufacturers (Cisco, Extreme Networks, Juniper Networks, Brocade Communications...) provide support for MVR on their high-end switches.
The main reason for using MVR is to save bandwidth by preventing duplicate multicast streams being sent in the core network, instead the stream(s) are received on the MVR-VLAN and forwarded to the VLANs where hosts have requested it/them.
