PIM-PING
As multicast networks start to get deployed in large number, it becomes very important that, proper mechanisms are in place for trouble shooting error conditions and informing other failure situations. Since multicasting has little support from IP in this matter (since ICMP does not support multicasting and broadcasting) it behooves that, multicast routing protocols, embed these features in themselves. This draft presents some ideas about how this can be done using PIM protocol suite as example, since PIMSSM and PIMSM are probably most widely used multicast routing protocols.