Multicast Server, huh?

[dark_glaive]

My internet access was recently cut off at my university for my computer being a "multicast server." They said that my system probably had a trojan and that I need to remove in order to restore my acccess. Since I actually work for them, I just cut my access right back on. I'm wondering though what exactly a multicast server is and why they think my Linux system is one. Do I have something improperly configured, or could it be they be recognizing something legitimate (like bittorrent) as an evil trojan?

[Tazz_ZA]

Hey Dark_glaive,

I can't see that beeing a multicast server is really a problem...Since multicast is setup and ran on routers (and to save bandwidth).....Multicast works like this :

1) The clients subscribe to multicast
2) The upstream router request it from the source (could be another upstream router)
3) The server (your machine) sends one packet to the client router and that gets duplicated

So, if you have a machine and there are 20 networks connected to it, and 20 networks connected to each of those 20 and 20 clients in each of them. You fire up a multicast server to stream them a video, they will send a subscribe packet to the routers, which will send a subscibe packet (if it hasn't done so already) to the first routers, which will then send you a subscibe packet. If all the clients are watching your video, your machine will be sending 20 streams - one to each router it can "see", those routers in turn will then send 20 streams each to all the routers they can "see", then they will each send 20 streams to the clients connected to them.

*breath*

So, I think they where talking about giFT or bittorrent or something like that rather...

Cheers,

Pieter

[kurifu]

If it really is a multicastproblem tell your network team to secure their networks and kill multicast support (if they do not want servers running).