16
Cisco 500 Series Stackable Managed Switch Administration Guide Release 1.3 266
 
Multicast
This section describes the Multicast Forwarding feature, and covers the following 
topics:
• Multicast Forwarding
• Defining Multicast Properties
• Adding MAC Group Address
• Adding IP Multicast Group Addresses
• Configuring IGMP Snooping
• MLD Snooping
• Querying IGMP/MLD IP Multicast Group
• Defining Multicast Router Ports
• Defining Forward All Multicast
• Defining Unregistered Multicast Settings
Multicast Forwarding
Multicast forwarding enables one-to-many information dissemination. Multicast 
applications are useful for dissemination of information to multiple clients, where 
clients do not require reception of the entire content. A typical application is a 
cable-TV-like service, where clients can join a channel in the middle of a 
transmission, and leave before it ends.
The data is sent only to relevant ports. Forwarding the data only to the relevant 
ports conserves bandwidth and host resources on links.