I'm playing with LANs here at home and I want to support multicast. Do all switches nowadays support multicast? Even the cheap ones?
I'm buying a 5-port gigabit switch. Will it support multicast?
Switch – Do all ethernet switches support multicast
ethernetmulticastswitch
Best Answer
Yes, even unmanaged "bargain" switches will likely have some minimal support for multicast, to the extent that a host connected to the switch will be able to receive a multicast stream.
Look at the switch's technical specs for a feature called IGMP snooping. This allows the switch to learn which ports actually want to subscribe to a multicast group, so it can forward it to only those who want it (which is the whole point of multicast). Without it, multicast will probably still work, but the switch will treat it as broadcast traffic and flood the multicast stream to all ports.