On 04/05/2011, at 1:54 AM, George Bonser <gbonser@seven.com> wrote:
Multicast is an elegant solution to a dwindling problem set.
And that is fundamentally where we disagree. I see this as not "elegant" at all. It is a fundamental part of the protocol suite. It is no more "elegant" than unicast. I also believe that it will be the wireless operators that bring this back to widespread use as wireless devices are used for more than simply placing phone calls. Time will tell, but it looks like the total use of multicast for content delivery is currently increasing. It just isn't increasing in the realm of home internet providers, yet, but I believe it will as people use home internet for things that they had traditionally used other services for such as broadcast radio and tv.
I dunno, I think it's elegant, in think Deering did an incredible job to create it and some many years ago I played a role to bring multicast to the Internet at large. I believed that multicast would play a huge role in the delivery of content, then. Trouble was that the way that people want to consume video means most of it is time-shifted. Folks in charge of networks didn't understand the technology and marketing people thought turning on multicast meant giving something away. I finally settled on the notion that multicast is a tool for service providers/enterprises to use but that it wouldn't ever be as pervasive as I'd hoped. As for wireless operators? The wireless medium itself is a broadcast network, why bother with multicast? jy