On Tue, Jul 09, 2002 at 03:49:04PM +0200, Niels Bakker wrote:
Niels Bakker wrote:
It would also be nice if operators with end users started offering native multicast. Although the AMS-IX multicast initiative started off with lots of enthusiasm, two years later it seems to have died almost completely.
* pete@he.iki.fi (Petri Helenius) [Tue 09 Jul 2002, 15:27 CEST]:
Most multicast projects go this way. The reason usually being one or more of; A) ISP's want to charge extra for multicast B) No content is being served over multicast C) Firewalls do not pass multicast (usually non-issue on home users)
Indeed. I'm personally most amazed that B) companies like shoutcast.com (who must be spending fortunes on bandwidth for all their streams) aren't pushing multicast more.
The problem is it's somewhat futile. Even at the larger providers there is a great deal of fear at times that Multicast will make the network unstable. Then there is the lack of education/cost-benifit on the edges for a lot of the smaller providers. They aren't aware of the savings they can see, consider the savings too small, don't know how to configure, can't configure, break the config, etc.. the list goes on and on. Then you get the people who are stuck with an upstream that doesn't know how to speak multicast or operate it. If you are a customer of (i'm using this as an example, so don't come after me) Savvis or InterNap, you use them to reach the "big" folks. If they don't have multicast enabled you don't have many choices unless you talk to someone who doesn't mind unicasting you a multicast tunnel, or go the commercial route ala multicasttech. Then you do have the above 'firewall' issue to contend with also, as well as other minor misconfigurations ... such as enabling igmp snooping on your switches can make multicast not work right.. some switch vendors ship this as a default setting.. Just a few of the barriers involved. I do encourage people to contact your upstream, enable multicast, at least speak mbgp to them and advertize your prefixes. Enabling pim or (msdp if necessary) can be done at a later date and doesn't require a bgp session flap. Contact your peers, ask them if they do multicast. I've seen the number of peers that have multicast enabled increase over the past year. - jared -- Jared Mauch | pgp key available via finger from jared@puck.nether.net clue++; | http://puck.nether.net/~jared/ My statements are only mine.