We have a set of ~40 embedded devices, each one equipped with a wifi module. All the devices are connected to the same wireless network. All the devices send packets to the same "master" computer. Each device sends at 10KB/s, 50 pps. Data is sent using UDP, mainly because our application can tolerate out-of-order or missed packets.
In our current configuration each device sends to a different multicast address, and the computer joins as many multicast groups as the number of devices. The same multicast address is not shared by multiple devices. Now the problem is that linux has a limit of 20 multicast groups that can be joined by the system, so we can't scale such a configuration to 40 devices.
Therefore I have two questions:
- Is there any drawback in increasing the number of multicast groups that can be joined on Linux from 20 to, say, 100?
- Is there any advantage in using a different multicast address for each device? Could I send data from all the devices to the same multicast address?