PIM-DM (Dense Mode) on the 5300xl Switches 
Troubleshooting 
Troubleshooting 
Symptom: Noticeable slowdown in some multicast traffic.  If the 
switch is supporting more than 1022 active flows. This generates the message 
Unable to learn HW IP multicast groups, table FULL in the 
Event Log because there is no room in the hardware Multicast Routing Table 
to add another Multicast Group. Software will route any multicast packets 
sent to multicast groups that are not in the hardware Multicast Routing Table, 
but it will be slower and packets may be dropped if the data rate is greater 
than 3000 packets per second. Refer to 
“Flow Capacity” on page 5-35. 
Note that the PIM protocol uses one MRT entry for every IP multicast source/ 
group pair that it is routing.  An entry is not used if the multicast flow is bridged 
and not routed. Entries in this table are automatically aged out if they are 
unused for a period of time. 
Heavy Memory Usage.  Heavy use of PIM (many S/G flows over many 
VLANs) combined with other memory-intensive features, can oversubscribe 
memory resources and impact overall performance. If available memory is 
exceeded, the switch drops any new multicast flows and generates appropri-
ate Event Log messages. Corrective actions can include reducing the number 
of VLANs on the 5300xl switch by moving some VLANs to another device, free 
up system resources by disabling another, non-PIM feature, and/or moving 
some hosts to another device. For more information, refer to 
“Operating 
Notes” on page 5-34 and “Messages Related to PIM Operation” on page 5-37. 
IPv4 Table Operation.  The IPv4 table, which contains the active IP multi-
cast addresses the switch is currently supporting, has 128k entries.  However, 
the IPv4 table also contains IP host entries for every IP source or destination 
that the switch has learned, as well as ACL flow entries.  Entries in this table 
are generally aged out if they are unused for 5 minutes or more. 
5-36