[Nottingham] Easy linux network multicast?

[Martin]

Charles Samuels wrote:
> Cam wrote, on Tuesday 2006 May 16 2:40 pm:
>>Martin
>>
>>>So how can you easily multicast a few GBytes of binary data to multiple
>>>machines on a LAN?
>>
>>I can't think of an easy way that's a true multicast. You could look at
>>videolan for streaming but your few Gb might have to be an MPEG file.

Interesting idea.

>>You could possibly multicast out a file using netcat -u, and receive it
>>with netcat -l, but you'd have to
>>
>>1. start and stop manually
>>2. verify integrity afterwards using rsync or similar

And #2


> For true multicast, there's a few things you need to know about:
> - you need to set up a specific route on the "multicast network"
> - it needs to be UDP (duh!) 
> - you need to account for dropped/out of order packets

Erk.

[---]
> (the client you are using needs to support multicast directly)

I could knock up some C and have a play but:

> Unless you're serious about performance, go with TCP.

That has worked ok but it has also been rather slow and choked the switches.

> Unless you have a reason to use multicast, use broadcast

Mmmmm... Must look up the significance/difference...

> You'll probably need to write code to use multicast or broadcast unless you 
> can find something on the 'net.

That's what I was hoping for. I can't believe this isn't already done!


This is for "Ghosting" multiple machines. I'd rather not have to resort
to my old copies of 'ghost' and multiple DOS disks for whatever nic is
used! Trying to keep this 'simple'.

Stef, you found a solution yet for your fun with this?

> good luck!

Thanks,

Cheers,
Martin

-- 
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Martin Lomas
martin at ml1.co.uk
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