All things related to multicast

[(Kevin C. Almeroth)]

>>      What good does it do to deliver multicast to a campus when the campus 
>> network
>>is not engineered to handle delivery of that traffic?  Is anyone doing 
>>something
>>that is working?  What approaches to this problem exist?  What are the local
>>engineering/technical issues?

This kind of problem is tough to cover at this kind of member meeting.
It is more designed for a Techs Workshop.  Who from your campus has been
attending these?  In fact, there have already been a number of events
which focus on exactly the questions you are asking.  Personally, I 
believe we are still a long way away from having good, self-contained
answers but that's a near impossibility when just about every campus
is different.

>>      I am a member of ViDe; some of my fellow committee members are 
>> convinced that
>>practical delivery of multicast will NEVER work.  I don't happen to agree 
>>with
>>them, but I don't see anything proposed here that would make them want to
>>reconsider.

Frankly, if they aren't willing to learn there isn't much anyone can
do about it.  The way multicast (or any other service for that matter)
typically gets deployed is if someone on the campus makes the effort
to learn how to get it running.   Granted, the amount of available
information is somewhat sparse, but that problem is improving.  Right
now, it takes just a little bit of extra effort.  And a fair number of
campuses and gigapops have demonstrated it is possible (see I2 multicast 
WWW page for maps with lists of connected sites).

Bottom line is if you (or an appropriate representative) has technical
concerns the "backbone engineers" session would be appropriate.
Otherwise, show up at the "neophytes" meeting.  There will be a
significant number of people in a similar situation.  A driving question
for me personally (as WG chair) is how to provide the kind of information 
you need in a way that you (or any campus) can use it.

BTW, in retrospect, I think "neophyte" is exactly the category you
would fit into...  not a novice but also not an expert.  Below, I
cut-and-pasted the text from the agenda about what the "neophyte"
session is supposed to cover:

Multicast: A discussion of how the support of high-speed
native multicast by Internet2/NGI backbones is requiring upgrades to 
campus/GigaPoP networks as well as work on multicast-capable applications.

-Kevin