[rbridge] When would an RBridge say "I don't want layer 2 multicast"?

[James Carlson]

Joe Touch writes:
> Donald Eastlake wrote:
> > This was put
> > through a consensus call on the working group mailing list resulting
> > in the formal consensus determination here:
> > http://www.postel.org/pipermail/rbridge/2007-September/002470.html.
> 
> Besides your mail, there was only one post from James Carlson endorsing
> the idea:
> http://www.postel.org/pipermail/rbridge/2007-July/002400.html

Just to make clear (which itself might be impossible at this point):
the reason I supported it was for symmetry with the other multicast-
optimizing bits already defined.  If the implementation has some
reason to know that it has useful local information about non-IP
multicasts in use (e.g., the subnet in question runs only IP or
perhaps is known to use GMRP for all multicast addresses), then it can
set or reset the flag as needed.  If it doesn't (or can't) know about
non-IP multicast usage, then it should set it to 1 with the rest of
those who aren't snooping the multicast control protocols.

I somewhat doubt it's going to see much use, but it's also fairly
cheap -- as long as we already have to support IPv4 and IPv6 control
bits.  (And since, if you're lazy, you can just ignore it and let the
downstream discard the unwanted packets.)

-- 
James Carlson, Solaris Networking              <james.d.carlson at sun.com>
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