Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol (DVMRP)

Definition - What does Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol (DVMRP) mean?

Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol (DVMRP) is an efficient Interior Gateway Protocol routing mechanism that combines Routing Information Protocol features with a truncated reverse path broadcasting algorithm for IP multitask data sharing between connectionless autonomous systems.

DVMRP is defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force as RFC 1075.

Techopedia explains Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol (DVMRP)

DVRMP's main tasks include:

  • Tracks multicast datagram source paths
  • Encapsulates packets as Internet Protocol (IP) datagrams
  • Supports multicast IP datagram tunneling via unsupported encapsulated and addressed unicast packet routers
  • Generates dynamic multicast IP delivery trees via reverse path multicasting and a distributed routing algorithm
  • Exchanges routing datagrams made up of small, fixed-length headers and tagged data streams via Internet Group Management Protocol
  • Handles tunnel and physical interfacing according to broadcast routing exchange source trees produced during truncated tree branch removal
  • Manages reverse path forwarding for multicast traffic forwarding to downstream interfaces

DVMRP header components are as follows:

  • Version
  • Type
  • Subtype: Response, request, non-membership report or non-membership cancellations
  • Checksum: Complete message sum of 16-bit ones, not including IP headers. Requires 16-bit alignment. Checksum computation field is zero.

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