Multicast Listener Discovery
# Multicast Listener Discovery

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 ICMPv6 messages use type 143.

## Support

Several operating system support MLDv2:

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