mBGP - A place to start

If you are having multicasting issues across Abilene, the first thing to check is whether or not the various networks are properly advertised via mBGP. From the Abilene looking glass, select "show route" as the command and, in the text box, enter "table inet.2" followed by the IP address of one of the hosts. If the host's network is being advertised properly, then the looking glass will return information regarding this network, including certain mBGP peering information. Figure 1 has the output of a query for the Boston University Audio server, agaudio.bu.edu (128.197.162.19), which is on a multicast enabled subnet at Boston University.

Figure 2 shows a query for the host 168.122.8.116, also at Boston University. Notice that the response is blank, indicating that the network on which this host is located is not being advertised to Abilene as a multicast enabled network.

If your network does not appear in mBGP, then there is likely a problem with the routers that connect your institution to Abilene. This situation can prevent you from both sending and receiving multicast traffic and should be resolved before checking MSDP or doing an mtrace.