DVMRP

Stands for Distance vector multicast routing protocol which is known to be the origin of multicasting.
It’s interior gateway routing protocol which supports routing for multicast packets. It may need
another routing protocol for route other types of packets but DVMRP also has a feature of sending
non multicast packets as unicast.

DVMRP is based upon two techniques Reverse Path Flooding & Pruning. Reverse Path Flooding is
responsible for forwarding multicast data to the designated group & also has a feature of flooding an
incoming multicast traffic to all the interfaces except the one from it received the traffic. On the
other hand Pruning actually filters the unwanted data traffic. DVMRP packet is encapsulated into IP
datagram’s, the packet has various fields among which few are specified below.

 Type: Specified the packet type. (Ox13 indicates a DVMRP packet)

 Code: Type of DVMRP packet
 Major & Minor versions: Specifies the version.

To make an adjacency with its neighbour the router sends periodic hello packets to it’s interfaces
using multicast address 224.0.0.4. On the response of hello packet the router makes a neighbour list
with interfaces associated to it. DVMRP also maintains two tables one multicast routing and the
other is forwarding table used in the processing of the protocol.

Metric:

DVMRP uses hop count as a metric.

Practical Issues with DVMRP:

 Scalability Issues.
 Uses Hop count as a metric
 Requires heavy memory utilization.
 Reliable only for small to medium networks.
 Sends periodic hello packets.