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Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) is a component of the Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) suite. MLD is used by IPv6 routers for discovering multicast listeners on a directly attached link, much like Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) is used in IPv4. The protocol is embedded in ICMPv6 instead of using a separate protocol. MLDv1 is similar to IGMPv2 and MLDv2 similar to IGMPv3.

Protocol

The following ICMPv6 message types are used:

ICMPv6 message type values

Message	Type value
Multicast Listener Query	130
MLDv1 Multicast Listener Report	131
MLDv2 Multicast Listener Report	143
Multicast Listener Done	132

Support

Several operating systems support MLDv2:

• Windows Vista and later
• FreeBSD since release 8.0
• The Linux kernel since 2.5.68
• macOS

References

1. S. Deering; W. Fenner; B. Haberman (October 1999). Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) for IPv6. Network Working Group. doi:10.17487/RFC2710. RFC 2710. Proposed Standard. Updated by RFC 3590 and 3810.
2. ^ R. Vida; L. Costa, eds. (June 2004). Multicast Listener Discovery Version 2 (MLDv2) for IPv6. Network Working Group. doi:10.17487/RFC3810. RFC 3810. Proposed Standard. Updates RFC 2710. Updated by RFC 4604.
3. "MLD and IGMP Using Windows Sockets". Windows Sockets 2. 2011-09-16.
4. "mld(4): Multicast Listener Discovery Protocol". FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual. 2009-05-27.
5. Torvalds, Linus (2003-04-19). "Linux 2.5.68 ChangeLog".
6. IPv6Hardening Guide for OS-X (PDF), 2015-01-29, retrieved 2021-05-23

• Internet protocols
• Internet Standards
• Network layer protocols
• IPv6