Yes. Most live IPTV is delivered across multicast*. There are a few gotchas. MMR uses a unicast fill for instant channel change (configurable bandwidth ammounts, etc) on top of Multicast. Some other middleware may have similar methods to accomplish this. Usually at the DSLAM you'll see "hax" to forward IGMP requests and multicast ingress to/from a specific VLAN. Most EFM based DSLAMs will segregate this all the way down to the CPE, and let the CPE handle differentiating the joins on the particular VLANs. Sometimes it's handled inside the DSLAM, but usually it's all configurable. Handling live TV unicast is definitely possible but brings up another set of challenges across the SP network towards the DSLAM/Agg point. Mainly reproduction of the same content * subscriber count, so your bandwidth towards a given DSLAM/Agg point grows with every subscriber. Low penetration count of IPTV, this can be less bandwidth, as IPTV penetration grows this could be several times the multicast bandwidth. Usually most channel lineups are 1gbps->2.5gbps of multicast bandwidth, depending on channel bitrates, amount of content, etc, etc.. MMR == Microsoft Mediaroom -- Tim On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 1:02 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:
Do any of the people who've worked with some of the IPTV delivery services mentioned here know if their live TV services can be handled via Multicast?
Off-list replies are fine; will summarize if anyone else cares.
Cheers, -- jra
-- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA #natog +1 727 647 1274