Study of Ieee 802.1p Garp/gmrp Timer Values*

As new services requiring multicast communications become more common, the deployment of selective multicasting in bridged LANs becomes essential. The GARP/GMRP protocol, defined in the IEEE 802.1p standard, addresses this issue. The performance of this protocol depends heavily on the values of the various timers that control it. In this paper we study the performance of GARP/GMRP in terms of response time, traffic overhead created by the protocol’s control messages, and other artifacts which arise from the particular operation of the protocol. We analyze the sensitivity of the various performance measures to various timers used in the protocol, and find the appropriate values to use for these timers. This performance assessment is done by means of computer simulation focusing on 10Base-T and 100Base-T network configurations. Usage scenarios are designed appropriately to bring out the specific effects of interest.