Customize Broadcast and Multicast Handling Settings

Before you begin

Select Optional Settings CUSTOMIZE under Additional Settings in the Configure Standard Wireless Networks window.

About this task

This task is part of a series of optional settings for configuring a standard wireless network. To reduce unnecessary airtime usage for multicast transmissions, a device can convert multicast frames to unicast frames under certain conditions or at all times, and can drop multicast frames when there are no group members present to receive them. Unicast traffic i reliability of video delivery. If a wireless client does not receive a unicast frame and does not reply with an ACK, the AP will retransmit. Multicast traffic does not support wireless frame delivery confirmation.

Procedure

  1. For the Convert IP Multicast to Unicast option, select one of the following settings:
    • Auto: The device is enabled to convert multicast frames to unicast when the channel utilization or membership count conditions are met.
    • Always: The device makes the conversion unconditionally.
    • Disable: The device does not use the multicast-to-unicast conversion feature, but instead follows the standard 802.11 behavior for sending multicast frames.
  2. Set the Channel Utilization Threshold from 1 to 100%.
  3. Set the Membership Count Threshold from 1 to 30.
  4. Select Enable Non-Essential Broadcast Filtering to reduce unnecessary broadcast and multicast traffic forwarding (such as LLC, STP, and MDNS) from APs with no registered listeners.
  5. Select Enable Multicast Drop to drop selected multicasts. You can then select multicasts to drop or to exclude from the drop:
    • DHCPv4: Clear the check-box to drop Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol version 4. (Selected by default.)
    • DHCPv6: Clear the check box to drop Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol version 6. (Selected by default.)
    • ARP: Clear the check box to drop Address Resolution Protocol. (Selected by default.)
    • IGMP-query: Clear the check box to drop Internet Group Management Protocol queries. (Selected by default.)
    • IPv6-Discovery: Clear the check box to drop Internet Control Message Protocol router discovery messages. (Selected by default.)
    • MDNS: This check box is not selected by default. Select this check box to drop multicast DNS frames. (Not selected by default.)

What to do next

Continue configuring Optional Settings in the Standard Wireless Networks configuration window.