Multicast IP – Is It Possible to Register Multicast IP Addresses?

I was able to resolve the issue. On the Kemp (with HA pair) you have the option of using a "Virtual MAC Address". If this box isn't checked, then the MAC of a load balancer VIP is that of the physical interface of the active Kemp unit. If this box is checked, then the MAC address of the VIP is a VRRP MAC. As you mentioned above the VRRP RFC states that the MAC being "00:00"{blah} with the last octet being the Router ID. The default Kemp HA [router] ID is 01. On my Powerconnects using Firmware 5.1.x.x I'm not using VRRP but I ran some traces and determined that the Powerconnect will drop a VRRP frame if the router ID is the same as itself. They do this EVEN if VRRP isn't configured and in that mode they default to 01. So changing the Kemp HA router ID to something like 22 (0x16) resulted in everything working.

In a word: NO

Multicast is a one-to-many system. TCP requires a one-to-one handshake to synchronize counters (sequence numbers) to ensure reliable transport. This cannot be done with many receivers as the sender has no way to know how many receivers there are and thus how many ACKs to expect, or what to do if one of the receivers disappears mid-transfer, etc.

Think of multicast as a speaker in a lecture hall. They don't know how many people are supposed to be there, nor care if some are late or leave. Nor do they know (or care) if everyone in the hall is hearing everything they say.