----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Wheeler" <jsw@inconcepts.biz>
The potential savings is limited by the over-speed of the mcast stream vs real-time, and the density of mcast listener groups. Given that access network speeds continue to increase, yet ISPs are really not increasing "bandwidth caps," it is reasonable to assume that an ISP might like to allow its subscribers to receive a very fast mcast stream for a short period of time, instead of all of those subscribers receiving many, slow mcast streams.
You know what would make this work *well*? If IAPs *didn't include mcast traffic in your cap*. Since the reason for their caps is, in the final analysis *to limit THEIR transit costs*, multicast would seem to be a really good means toward that end, unless my final analysis is contradicted by something better justified and documented... This would turn multicast into a Consumer-pull technology. Cheers, -- jra