IGMP host membership report packet got filtered always on a VMware Linux
 

I run a a simple C program to receive multicast traffic. It works on hardware Linux box, but not vmware one. I sniffed the packets, and found out on vmware box, the IGMP host membership report packet are not visible to the network though I can see it locally. That packet is sent to 224.0.0.22. On a hardware Linux, this packet is visible to the network. If this membership report packet is not visible, the network router will not know there is a host expecting multicast traffic on a multicast address, thus the prog failed to receive the multicast traffic on a certain address.

More weird, I can send multicast packets to pubic multicast addresses, like 224.2.2.2. Those packets are visible to the network.

I checked the firewall is off on the vmware linux.

How is the network configured on the vmware guest OS (i.e. NAT or bridged)? You will probably want to use the bridged connection.

What does your routing table look like on the host and guest OS? Is there more than one interface on either host? Do both hosts have a default gateway defined?

I use bridged mode. Both host and guest have only one NIC. No default gateway configured on neither.

Later, the issue is resolved by switching to vm player 4.0. The issue vmware is vmware server 2.0, which is three years old... Maybe vm player 4.0 fixed something about IGMP?!