"Stephen Sprunk" <ssprunk@cisco.com> writes:

...

Thinking about doing multicast Usenet feeds as a way to cut down the bandwidth in and out of your ISP overlooks the fact that reliable transport for such things doesn't exist.

Ah, but the point of Muse was not to provide reliable news service, but to reduce the average propagation time and provide "good enough" delivery which could be supplanted by a traditional reliable feed.

I probably shouldn't have used the term "reliable transport" because I'm talking about propensity for one's network to break (ie, whether you can count on the transport being available), not reliable data streams a la TCP. "High maintenance" in the vein of Sally Albright in "When Harry Met Sally" is probably more appropriate. ---Rob