Re: Seeking clarification of "unregistered packet"

Can someone comment on exactly what the purpose of flooding unregistered
packets is?

I think most of my confusion comes from the third paragraph of 2.1.2
(3), where it discusses v3 hosts and switches that do not process v3
REPORTs.  That gives me the impression that flooding unregistered
packets was meant to solve that issue and ensure the v3 hosts receive
traffic.  However, in the last paragraph of that section it is conceded
that when both v2 and v3 hosts are present, this does not work because
v2 joins cause the v3 hosts to stop receiving traffic.  If there are
only v3 hosts present, the point is moot - if the switch doesn't
understand the v3 REPORTs there is no "snooping" happening at all, and
it has to flood all multicast to all ports.  So, if v3 hosts are to
function in such an environment, it appears we need to flood ALL traffic
to ports with v3 hosts attached rather than just unregistered traffic.

Is there another purpose for flooding unregistered traffic in a "normal"
network?  I was considering a bootstrapping scenario - i.e. when the
switch comes up, we don't know what groups the hosts had previously
joined, so flooding unregistered traffic allows hosts to start receiving
sooner.  However, this seems to be of marginal benefit because as soon
as we receive a join for a group on any port, the other ports will be
"cut off".  Using some sort of restart timer (where we flood all traffic
to all ports for some amount of time after boot) seems like a better
solution to that problem.

thanks,

todd.