Sam,

Good point. I certainly wouldn't recommend using that command to enable a receiver for a multicast group with high bandwidth stream.

Regards,

Thank you for your response, that helps out a lot. I am still a little confused why a router would process a multicast packet? You mentioned it is for testing but is that the sole purpose of the command join-group? When the router processes the multicast packet what is really happening?

Izack,

It could be as simple as pinging a multicast group from a given source and the router on which the "ip igmp join-group" is configured for that same group will respond to that ping. I often seen that as an easy way to test a new multicast network.

Thanks again Harold. The join-group sounds to me like a command reserved mostly for a lab environment. It sounds like there isn't much practical use for it besides simulating a multicast source.

Izack,

In your last statement you say simulating multicast source but this command rather simulate a multicast receiver.

I would tend to disagree with you last statement. Although I agree that one wouldn't use this command to perform capacity testing, I have used it many times in the past to perform functional tests and troubleshoot new multicast networks and it has helped me tremendously as it creates receivers without having to involved any workstations and requires very little configuration.

Regards,