How can I test if my Windows XP machine can send multicast packets?

Question

I would like to know how test if my Windows XP machine has the ability to multicast. Therefore, I want to multicast a packet from my machine to itself.

How can I do that?

Solution 1

I usually test multicast by pinging the IPv4 all-hosts multicast address:

ping 224.0.0.1

You'll see ping responses from yourself, as well as any other IPv4 hosts on your current network. Assuming they don't have firewall rules or other OS policies in place to not respond to pings or multicast pings.

By the way, if this is a wireless client, the ability to successfully send multicasts is not nearly as tricky as the ability to successfully receive multicasts. For the receive case, you'll need to perhaps ping the all-hosts multicast address from another machine on the network, and see if that other machine keeps getting ping replies from your machine.

Solution 2

Execute the following command netsh interface ip show joins in a command line prompt.

It will show you all network interfaces of your computer and for each of them displays multicast addresses on which the interface is listening/registered:

C:\Users\gpr>netsh interface ip show joins

Interface 1: Loopback Pseudo-Interface 1

Scope       References  Last  Address
----------  ----------  ----  ------------------
0                    1  Yes   239.255.255.250

Interface 12: Local Area Connection

Scope       References  Last  Address
----------  ----------  ----  ------------------
0                    0  Yes   224.0.0.1
0                    1  Yes   224.0.0.251
0                    1  Yes   224.0.0.252
0                    1  Yes   239.255.255.250

As Spiff said, to send packets on a multicast address, you can use the ping command but if you want to use it for an application purpose, prefer to use private multicast addresses (in the range of 239.255.x.y) instead of to use standard multicast addresses (224.x.y.z).

Comments

[Andy]

Can you be more elaborate ? What configurations should i check to see if i am able to send and receive multicast packets ?