Multicast
Software defined multicast (SDMC™) is a feature of the cloudSwXtch overlay network. With SDMC, existing applications and services that expect standards-based, IP multicast will work without requiring any code changes and with performance that approaches that of bare metal.
At a high level, cloudSwXtch implements a software switch that serves the same role as a hardware switch. cloudSwXtch receives multicast packets from producers and sends a copy of each packet to every destination VM. The cloudSwXtch control plane uses the industry standard IGMPv2/3 specification for the management of group membership.
The xNIC service handles multicast traffic between the switch and the VM operating system. The xNIC service must be installed on every VM that needs to send or receive multicast traffic.
SUMMARY
The cloudSwXtch system consists of a software switch instantiated within a virtual network and a set of virtual machines that have an xNIC virtual interface.
Applications can send and receive IP multicast by targeting the virtual network interface. IGMP control packets are generated by the local operating system and the xNIC virtual interface seamlessly picks these up and sends them to the cloudSwXtch instance. Local applications will work in this environment just as they would on a similar bare-metal network.