On 4/29/2011 2:47 PM, Dan White wrote:
On 29/04/11 14:04 -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
On Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:48:51 EDT, Jay Ashworth said: What's the break-even point, the number of streams being sent at once where multicasting it starts taking less resources than N unicast streams?
Video distribution is bound to continue to go in the direction of Netflix/Youtube where ISPs are going to be highly motivated to find cheaper ways to provide internet content to their end users. And directly peered, multicast agreements between CDNs and ISPs are going to be a real quick way to chop operational costs. Even if that doesn't apply to Netflix content today, it's bound to matter for content that consumers are going to want to consume in real time (sporting events).
From the perspective of an ISP operating in a small market, we are seeing a big shift in usage toward Netflix and netflix-like services that is necessarily going to change the model of how we provide internet services. We have limited access to CDN or Content-Producer peering agreements (that would help to save costs) and, even if we did, we're in no position to demand ingress cash flow in those agreements (not enough eyeballs!). Since our users are the ones with the business arrangements with Netflix, and since their demand is shifting in that direction, I'd imagine we'd jump at a chance for private multicast agreements, even if demand didn't quite warrant it at this point.
Is it all just stalling tactics until IPv6 is everywhere, or am I incorrect that multicast is baked into it rather than tacked on. Unlike the current state of multicast islands were looking at global reach to all IPv6 end points. Even if providers try and stem the flow with AUP's banning sourcing of multicast how many major apps poping up with "you have a valid IPv6 address but multicast is not functioning please contact your ISP as your internet is broken, running at reduced capacity/quality" flooding help desks until ISP's cave in? The only loosers are the ones that were getting paid for transit by the sender, the eyeball networks could well see this as a reduction of backbone utilization Silas