rhack

For those of you that are interested, I have finally gotten my Symonivew operating. Turned out to not be such a big deal. We did it without installing additional routers as well. Our data architects came up with a scheme to limit our exposure with implementing multicast. In short, they allow only one IP address to be a "publisher" or "speaker". This prevents any other applications to jump on the network and start broadcasting. Additionally, access lists were created for the network segments that the agents requiring the symonview updates are on. For the Symonview application, it is not really neccesary to have access lists, just an added security measure.

Multicast operates in a reserved address range of 234.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255. Symonview defaults to a 234 address, but we opted for a 239.255.1.1 - this is configured to be the only address that can broadcast. In Symonview, the default address of the multicast source was changed to the 239 address, on the client end, you define the static IP of the Symoniview server (this is used to get the display definitiions), and you define the multicast source address, agian this is the 239.255.1.1 address. The Symonview server only sends updates to the 239.255.1.1 address, once it sends messages it creates a multicast group, the client PC's "join" the multicast group to get their updates.

So, the broadcasting has been limited, and the number of clients able to listen has been limited. End result is multicast enabled without killing your network.

If anyone wants additonal details let me know. I was pretty psyched to get it working.