Configuring MSDP

How to configure the Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) on the Catalyst 3750X switch. The MSDP connects multiple Protocol-Independent Multicast sparse-mode (PIM-SM) domains.

MSDP is not fully supported in this software release because of a lack of support for Multicast Border Gateway Protocol (MBGP), which works closely with MSDP. However, it is possible to create default peers that MSDP can operate with if MBGP is not running.

To use this feature, the switch must be running the IP services image.

Configuring a Default MSDP Peer

In this software release, because BGP and MBGP are not supported, you cannot configure an MSDP peer on the local switch by using the ip msdp peer global configuration command. Instead, you define a default MSDP peer (by using the ip msdp default-peer global configuration command) from which to accept all SA messages for the switch. The default MSDP peer must be a previously configured MSDP peer. Configure a default MSDP peer when the switch is not BGP- or MBGP-peering with an MSDP peer. If a single MSDP peer is configured, the switch always accepts all SA messages from that peer.

shows a network in which default MSDP peers might be used. a customer who owns Switch B is connected to the Internet through two Internet service providers (ISPs), one owning Router A and the other owning Router C. They are not running BGP or MBGP between them. To learn about sources in the ISP's domain or in other domains, Switch B at the customer site identifies Router A as its default MSDP peer. Switch B advertises SA messages to both Router A and Router C but accepts SA messages only from Router A or only from Router C. If Router A is first in the configuration file, it is used if it is running. If Router A is not running, only then does Switch B accept SA messages from Router C. This is the default behavior without a prefix list.

If you specify a prefix list, the peer is a default peer only for the prefixes in the list. You can have multiple active default peers when you have a prefix list associated with each. When you do not have any prefix lists, you can configure multiple default peers, but only the first one is the active default peer as long as the router has connectivity to this peer and the peer is alive. If the first configured peer fails or the connectivity to this peer fails, the second configured peer becomes the active default, and so on.

The ISP probably uses a prefix list to define which prefixes it accepts from the customer's router.