On Sun, 10 June 2001, Joshua Goodall wrote:
I have found that most sales reps don't know what multicast is, or why it is important to have.
many network engineers glaze over at the mention of multicast. it takes some serious grey matter work to fathom the entire subject.
Essentially every major network operator has one network engineer who can set up multicast for customers. The problem is very few networks have figured out how to turn multicast into a commercial product. So if you don't find that one engineer, you are out of luck. Unicast streaming may be less efficient, but most providers can figure out how to charge for it and make it a supported product. Unfortunately some folks have confused multimedia with multicast. While I've seen many multimedia multicast applications, I haven't seen one which can't have its essential elements replicated by unicast streams. Is there a killer-ap for multicast?
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Unicast streaming may be less efficient, but most providers can figure out how to charge for it and make it a supported product. Unfortunately some folks have confused multimedia with multicast. While I've seen many multimedia multicast applications, I haven't seen one which can't have its essential elements replicated by unicast streams. Is there a killer-ap for multicast?
Multicast is an extension to Unicast. I don't think there is a multicast application that cannot be run over unicast protocols as well. Our application for multicast will be: live broadcast of academic and technical classes live broadcast of sporting events live broadcast of campus television station live broadcast of campus radio station video conferencing across multiple locations All these things CAN be done using unicast, but multicast is much more efficient. === Tim ********************************************** Tim Winders, MCSE, CNE, CCNA Associate Dean of Information Technology South Plains College Levelland, TX 79336 Phone: 806-894-9611 x 2369 FAX: 806-894-1549 Email: TWinders@SPC.cc.tx.us ********************************************** -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (OSF1) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iEYEARECAAYFAjsjdAwACgkQTPuHnIooYbwXHwCfaSW3hdDEyuj8ZBrXm3PmWNCz ozgAn3ON/8TLL6rROboNnSQW1WlXfJd0 =5I3y -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Sean Donelan wrote:
While I've seen many multimedia multicast applications, I haven't seen one which can't have its essential elements replicated by unicast streams. Is there a killer-ap for multicast?
24x7 broadcast media is the obvious/visible application. HOWEVER, most of the 24x7 media sites (CNN, etc.) are doing on-demand video, rather than streaming a constant feed. Content providers are treating the Internet like a VCR instead of treating it like television, and multicasting has very little value in a VCR model. Whether or not the Internet is suitable for a television model is unproven at this point. I would assume that it is, and that it is likely to eventually be used in this capacity. But it isn't yet. There is probably a chicken-v-egg thing going on here, too. On the one hand, content providers aren't offering 24x7 multicast feeds because there isn't enough multicast access at the end-points. Meanwhile, carriers aren't offering multicasting because there's no demand for it from the content providers. Apart from 24x7 broadcast there isn't an obvious killer app. Most of the multicast activity is going on in the local/admin scope, with discovery and management protocols. -- Eric A. Hall http://www.ehsco.com/ Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/
participants (3)
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Eric A. Hall -
Sean Donelan -
Tim Winders