Operation Manual – Multicast Protocol 
Quidway S3900 Series Ethernet Switches-Release 1510  Chapter 7  PIM Configuration
 
Huawei Technologies Proprietary 
7-3 
Server
Multicast
User A
User B
User C
User D
User E
Source
Receiver
Receiver
Receiver
packets
SPT
Prune
Prune
Prune
 
Figure 7-1 Diagram for SPT establishment in PIM-DM 
The process above is called "Flooding and Pruning". Every pruned node also provides 
timeout mechanism. If pruning behavior times out, the router will initiate another 
flooding and pruning process. This process is performed periodically for PIM-DM. 
III. Graft 
When a pruned downstream node needs to be restored to the forwarding state, it may 
send a graft packet to inform the upstream node. As shown in 
Figure 7-1, user A 
receives multicast data again. Graft messages will be sent hop by hop to the multicast 
source S. The intermediate nodes will return acknowledgements when receiving Graft 
messages. Thus, the pruned branches are restored to the information transmission 
state.   
IV. RPF check 
PIM-DM adopts the RPF check mechanism to establish a multicast forwarding tree 
from the data source S based on the existing unicast routing table, static multicast 
routing table, and MBGP routing table.  
The procedure is as follows: 
z  When a multicast packet arrives, the router first checks the path.  
z  If the interface this packet reaches is the one along the unicast route towards the 
multicast source, the path is considered as correct.  
z  Otherwise, the multicast packet will be discarded as a redundant one.  
The unicast routing information on which the path judgment is based can be of any 
unicast routing protocol such as RIP or OSPF. It is independent of the specified unicast 
routing protocol. The static multicast routing table needs to be configured manually, and 
the MBGP routing table is provided by the MBGP protocol.