Comment chicken and egg (Score 1) 34
thing is the whole multicast thing is a bit chicken and egg at the mo.
ISP's, although they are playing with it in the backbones and some have fully multicast enabled backbones have no real need to roll it down to the end user because there aren't any (many) apps/broadcasts out there that use it!
And content providers don't bother multicasting content as the software isn't up to scratch and the ISP's don't support it down to the customer network.
Then there is the issue that even if the ISP supported it down to the customer network that most customer networks aren't setup for multicast on a LAN level. Might not be an issue having an extra E1/T1 of broadcast trffic on most LAN's but some people wouldn't be too happy about it.
At present in the UK's major peering point more than 20 isp networks exchange multicast traffic (about 20% of total members). Which is a start...
Also new developments are under way in the addressing and management technology behhind multicast. In particular PIM-SSM (source specific multicast) that allows requests to be made on source,group (S,G) broadcast rather than just anyone,group (*,G) will change the way multicast can be used on the internet, as unicast addresses will become the decriminater for the group. This gives each broadcaster many multicast groups to broadcast too unlike the 255 addresses AS's get now.
Again though this requires IGMPv3 which i don't think will be making an apperance in any M$ IP stack anytime soon!
Bottom line is the technology rocks but the current financial climate seems to have put projects like multicast on a back burner...
ISP's, although they are playing with it in the backbones and some have fully multicast enabled backbones have no real need to roll it down to the end user because there aren't any (many) apps/broadcasts out there that use it!
And content providers don't bother multicasting content as the software isn't up to scratch and the ISP's don't support it down to the customer network.
Then there is the issue that even if the ISP supported it down to the customer network that most customer networks aren't setup for multicast on a LAN level. Might not be an issue having an extra E1/T1 of broadcast trffic on most LAN's but some people wouldn't be too happy about it.
At present in the UK's major peering point more than 20 isp networks exchange multicast traffic (about 20% of total members). Which is a start...
Also new developments are under way in the addressing and management technology behhind multicast. In particular PIM-SSM (source specific multicast) that allows requests to be made on source,group (S,G) broadcast rather than just anyone,group (*,G) will change the way multicast can be used on the internet, as unicast addresses will become the decriminater for the group. This gives each broadcaster many multicast groups to broadcast too unlike the 255 addresses AS's get now.
Again though this requires IGMPv3 which i don't think will be making an apperance in any M$ IP stack anytime soon!
Bottom line is the technology rocks but the current financial climate seems to have put projects like multicast on a back burner...
