MLD Fundamentals

MLD is an asymmetric protocol. It specifies separate behaviors for multicast address listeners (that is, hosts or routers that listen to multicast packets) and multicast routers. Each multicast router learns, for each directly attached link, which multicast addresses and which sources have listeners on that link. The information that MLD gathers is provided to the multicast routing protocols that the router uses. This information ensures that multicast packets arrive at all links where listeners require such packets.

A multicast router can itself be a listener of one or more multicast addresses; that is, the router performs both the multicast router role and the multicast address listener part of the protocol. The router collects the multicast listener information needed by the multicast routing protocol and informs itself and other neighboring multicast routers of the listening state.

IPv6 routers use MLD to discover: