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Yes, Sparse mode is what you need. If you have
Mikrotik routers at your sites, you'd want to get the Multicast
package installed on the routers (at least those which would
transit your multicast streams). You'll have a bit of work to
setup PIM, particularly related to the Rendezvous Point. Cisco has
a quasi-automatic way of doing it, but on Mikrotik you'll have to
do it manually. Essentially, the RP (rendezvous point) is a router
that can see all the multicast you have and all the routers
between the RP and any device that would request the multicast
stream need to have PIM running. Those routers will listen for IGMP join requests
and send the requested multicast group (i.e. stream) towards the
direction of the requestor. Also, make sure you allow
all the PIM-related communications as well as IGMP messages in the
input chain of the Mikrotiks. PIM is similar to OSPF or LDP in
that it uses unsolicited UDP multicasts to create neighbor
relationships and IGMP's are also multicast. If you have switches between the routers and the AP's, if they're managed switches and they support IGMP snooping, you'll want to turn that on so it only sends multicast out ports that are towards a requestor. If they're not managed or don't support IGMP snooping, they'll just send whatever multicast comes into them out all ports. In the APs, I don't know exactly how Cambium handles multicast, but generally, multicast data is sent at the lowest (or low) MCS rate in wireless APs so it is more reliable. In this case, you'd want the multicast to be sent over the air at a high MCS rate so there was enough bandwidth for the stream. In UBNT, it's called Multicast Enhancement. The trick for you is getting something on the requestor end that knows what to do with a multicast stream. You can test it using VLC on a computer by joining the multicast group by telling VLC to open a network source with a URL like "udp://239.255.255.20:8100" (insert your multicast group IP and port here). VLC will send the IGMP join request, IGMP-aware router will hear it, and start sending it to VLC. The quickest way to test it is to be on the same L2 network as a Mikrotik and see if you get the stream. If PIM is working, you should. Then you can try to get behind an IGMP-aware RG (i.e. router) and see how it works for you. You'll also be able to watch the mechanics of PIM work, too, which is kind of cool. On the device-side of things, I don't think Firesticks, Apple TVs or Roku's support multicast video, only HLS. Even if they did, you'd need some kind of UI that had a mapping between channels and multicast groups/ports (i.e. Channel X is at multicast group address Y and port Z) and tune to it. I think you'd need some kind of a true set top box like an Amino to have it pull multicast. You could deploy a Wowza server. It could transmux the multicast streams into HLS streams and be a streaming media server (I'm ignoring scaling this at the moment). But if the video codec was something typical of IPTV (MPEG2 with AC3 audio), then just transmuxing it won't likely be of any help because the video bitrate would be too high. You'd also need to transcoded at least the video to H.264 so the bitrate was reasonable (the AC3 audio can stay, all the above devices can deal with that). Obviously I'm making a lot of assumptions about your situation, but you get the idea.
Jesse DuPont Owner
/ Network
Architect Like us! facebook.com/celeritybroadband
On 2/23/22 2:43 PM, Steven Kenney via
AF wrote:
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