PIM Multicasting

[kongalex]

We have a fully redundant 6509 in our network. One of the Vlans are connected to a full-clustered Firewall solution (Stonebeat cluster). To make this work, we have set up the 6509 MSFC the following way:

MSFC1:

interface vlan XX

ip pim dense-mode

arp <cluster-ip> <cluster multicast-mac> arpa

MSFC2:

interface vlan XX

ip pim dense-mode

arp <cluster-ip> <cluster multicast-mac> arpa

We had to remove ip pim from VlanXX on MSFC2, because it seems that the traffic from the FW bounces between both interfaces (with pim configured). With only 1 pim interface configured the cluster works normally, but we have no redundancy any more.

Is there way to configure PIM, ala HSRP to have only 1 active PIM router on the Vlan to avoid such a problem?

Regards

Alexander Ballamy

[ipotts]

To clarify, is it unicast traffic from the firewall towards the HSRP MAC address?

If so, is HSRP flipping between both MSFCs when you do sh ip stand int ...

[kongalex]

Yes! The traffic from the FW is regular ip-traffic. Unicast is the traffic-pattern.

HSRP is not flipping, i think it's an multicasting issue between the Stonebeat cluster and the PIM-interfaces.

[ipotts]

Hello,

If HSRP is solid and not flipping then I am struggling to see how unicast traffic from the firewall unicast to the HSRP MAC can be failing. If HSRP is solid, then the 224.0.0.2 hellos between the HSRP devices must be working, and this is the only multicast component of HSRP.