PIM Dense Mode

Protocol-Independent Multicast - Dense Mode (PIM-DM) is a multicast routing protocol. PIM dense-mode is a flood and prune-based protocol. Convergence is based on the downstream routers' response for the traffic received. The downstream router in turn floods the traffic to its own downstream interfaces. Each router sends prune to the interface on which it received the traffic under the following conditions:
  • Traffic was not received on RPF interface towards the source.
  • The PIM router is a leaf router, and there are no IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol)/MLD members.
  • All the downstream PIM routers have pruned the stream, and there are no IGMP/MLD members.

A new feature, called PIM-DM state refresh, creates two PIM-DM operating modes, which are described in the following sections:

Note

Note

For additional information on PIM-DM, see RFC 3973, Protocol Independent Multicast - Dense Mode (PIM-DM): Protocol Specification.