IPTV and multicast setup help needed

[Ahmed83]

Hi everyone,

I have a setup having 2 core switches (MS425-32) stacked operating at L3 and 2 server farm switches (MS350-48) stacked operating at L2.
IPTV system components including Cisco DCM and receivers all physically connected to server farm switches which is then connected to the 2 core switches.
all L3 interfaces are created on the core stack.
we have 1 subnet/vlan for DCM input and receivers output interfaces, 1 subnet/vlan for DCM output, and 2 different subnets/vlans for set top boxes and TVs.
my question is how the multicast should be configured on Meraki according to the best practice including:
- Which interfaces should be configured with multicast enabled and which should be configured with querier?
- Is it okay to have the interfaces created on the core while the multicast sources are all physically connected to the server farm stack? (core is all fiber interfaces and can't host the UTP connections).
- How the randevous point interface should be configured? and should it be a separate interface or it's better to choose one for example the STBs subnet interface as the RP?
- What's the best practices to have smooth multicast flowing through the network?
- I have an issue that the channel stream becomes unavailable after a while (around 1 hour) then if we changed the channels the stream comes back normally then after a while goes again and so on, what could be the probable reason for that?

[Uberseehandel]

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@Ahmed83 wrote:

Hi everyone,

 . . . .
IPTV system components including Cisco DCM and receivers all physically connected to server farm switches which is then connected to the 2 core switches.
 
we have . . .  2 different subnets/vlans for set top boxes and TVs.
my question is how the multicast should be configured on Meraki according to the best practice including:
- Which interfaces should be configured with multicast enabled and which should be configured with querier?

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Multicast comes in several different flavours.

You have not specified the ISP/provider's specifications for the IPTV services you have subscribed to. Without those specifications, it is impossible to advise on how your network components should be configured. Some varieties of Multicast are not passed by the MX security appliances.

[Ahmed83]

we are not subscribed to IPTV service, we have our Cisco IPTV solution on premises, so IPTV system is operating on our local LAN, it was working perfectly fine with conventional Cisco 4500 and 2960 switches, but we are now changing our LAN to Cisco Meraki switches.

[Uberseehandel]

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@Ahmed83 wrote:
we are not subscribed to IPTV service, we have our Cisco IPTV solution on premises, so IPTV system is operating on our local LAN, it was working perfectly fine with conventional Cisco 4500 and 2960 switches, but we are now changing our LAN to Cisco Meraki switches.

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Without any information, I can only say that in all probability, you will not be able to migrate the Cisco IPTV solution to the Meraki platform, if using an MX appliance and MS switches, but, if you are using the MS switches alone, you may be able to configure them correctly. Different flavours of Multicast require quite different configurations.

One can run IGMPv3 through MS switches, but not the MX.

[Ahmed83]

although the MX firewall but all the IPTV streaming is not passing through it as it's local on the LAN

[Uberseehandel]

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@Ahmed83 wrote:
although the MX firewall but all the IPTV streaming is not passing through it as it's local on the LAN

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As the IPTV streaming is limited to the (V)LANs you may get everything to work correctly.