All things related to multicast

[(Kevin C. Almeroth)]

Here is my list of items that were generated out of the 
Miami NLANR/Internet2 Techs Workshop (sorry for being
a month late...  it has taken me this long to get caught
up).

1.  The new multicast deployment workshop (in addition to 
    the intro to multicast workshop) was a tremendous
    success.  My plan was to have lots of people ready
    to talk in case no issues came up, but given that
    lots of issues came up not everyone got to talk
    (sorry if you were on the list...  opportunities
    will be available in the future).

    The feeling I got from talking to folks is that lots
    of people want to follow just behind what the cutting
    edge multicast deployment folks.  I think people are
    waiting to hear that from the community that multicast
    is becoming ready to deploy.  This process is a good 
    thing and therefore it is also a good thing that people 
    who are currently deploying multicast give talks, e.g. 
    Ken Lindahl's talk (which is now available on the I2 
    page).

    So, in the future, at each workshop, we will be having
    multicast deployment workshops in addition to the intro
    to multicast stuff.  They may be short, they may be long.
    It depends on how many folks volunteer to talk.

2.  A new year's resolution for me was to put together a
    multicast management tools and techniques WWW page with
    real-time stats and pointers to places to get help on
    multicast management.  Stay tuned.

3.  I'm going to work with the NLANR folks to get some
    useful (and more general) multicast information up on the
    NLANR multicast WWW pages.  Included in this will be a
    survey of I2 members who are using multicast in their
    apps.  Not only do we need multicast deployment expertise
    and status, but we also need multicast application expertise
    and status.  I'd also like to make these pages community-driven
    so if there is stuff that SHOULD be on the list that isn't
    bring it up on the mailing list.

4.  One focus for the coming year is to have more "big time" (tm)
    events that can be used to motivate campuses to deploy
    multicast.  The NetAid was one last year.  We are working
    on similar events for the future.

5.  One technical issue is how to provide Abilene with a
    direct connection to AS10888 and any potential commercial
    ISPs who I2 members have a research interest in directly
    multicast peering.  Guy Almes, the Abilene NOC folks, the
    NASA Ames NGIX folks, etc. etc. are all working to find the
    best technical solution.  Currently, NREN is giving us
    commodity Internet groups and multicast routes.

6.  Another technical issue that came up (based on what Ken
    Lindahl is doing at UCB) is whether we can do semantic-based
    allocation of group addresses, i.e. a certain ranges of
    addresses imply applications within a specified bandwidth 
    range.  As an example, Ken is currently doing a split into
    four groups:  <200 kbps, <2 Mbps, <20 Mbps, and >20 Mbps.

    The initial consensus seemed like this was a good idea, but
    follow-up discussion with some folks has led me to believe
    that this may not be such a good thing (basically because
    administrative overhead is high and utility is low).

    So address scoping for low bandwidth and high bandwidth
    groups (important to distinguish what groups should be
    carried from I2 into the commodity Internet) continues 
    to be a problem.

That's all that is currently on my list...  comments?

-Kevin