All things related to multicast

["Lawrence A. Rowe" <>]

Hi -

This may not be the best place to raise this issue, but it seems to me
one of the problems we're facing now is that the multicast protocols are
changing and not all router vendors support them.  For example, EECS at
Berkeley continues to struggle with the lack of multicast support in Bay
Networks routers and I was talking to someone from another university
who was saying that they have Cabletron routers which may or may not
provide adequate support.

Seems like there are several things we as a community might do.

1. Establish some sort of interoperability test center.  Perhaps someone
would like to setup a laboratory within which vendors can bring there
equipment to work out multicast problems.

2. We really need a way to deploy multicast other than "buy Cisco
routers."  Personally, I'd like to do it, but the politics and costs
preclude us from making that sort of change.  One possibility would be
to have a current implementation of the multicast protocol in a computer
that sits behind a non-multicast router - sort of like the old days of
DVMRP.  As far as I know, there is no PIM-SM/MGPD public domain software
implementation that we could deploy -- I know that the UMich gated group
was working on it, but when we looked at their code 6 months ago it
wasn't ready, are there others?

I suspect that having a solution such as the later might make deployment
on campuses easier since it doesn't require specific changes in routers
and might give network operators more control over where multicast is
deployed.

I suppose this comment is heresy, but comments?
        Larry
-- 
Professor Lawrence A. Rowe          Internet:  

Computer Science Division - EECS       Phone: 510-642-5117
University of California, Berkeley       Fax: 510-642-5615
Berkeley, CA 94720-1776            URL: http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/~larry