All things related to multicast

[(Kevin C. Almeroth)]

From: Hugh LaMaster 
<>
To: Jill Gemmill 
<>
cc: 

Subject: RE: Las Cruces Summary


On Fri, 12 Mar 1999, Jill Gemmill wrote:

>   > 1.  There is no MBone in the backbone (slide 2).  The term MBone has
>   >     lots of meanings and lots of people disagree.  We are deploying
>   >     native multicast.
> 
> This is an interesting observation.  I have only heard these broadcasts 
> referred
> to as MBone up until now (that is, the technology is native multicast; the
> broadcasts are MBone?  not worth differentiating?) This is probably a common
> mis-nomer

Kevin discussed this but I will chime in.  There are people who
prefer strongly to use "Mbone" to mean the part of the internet
with global multicast connectivity.  When Peter Lothberg's view,
(that multicast is no big deal and will become ubiquitous), is 
achieved, then Mbone == Internet.

Other people use "Mbone" to mean other things.  Such as:

 - The area of mrouted-(ip-in-ip tunnels with dvmrp
   connectivity)-tunnel-connected networks; or,
 - A loosely-knit club of multicast-connected internet people
   who do cool stuff (which some people think is good, others
   think use this association to label multicast as a toy); 
 - etc.

All the different meanings make "Mbone" a tricky word to use.

Personally, I think ubiquitous multicast is now feasible,
and, will become "no big deal" as Peter Lothberg said in his
IP over WDM presentation.


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 Hugh LaMaster, M/S 233-21,    ASCII Email: 

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