All things related to multicast

[Guy Almes <>]

Kevin,
  Let me express my appreciation, both for your excellent report and for the
vigorous working group engaged in the thread below.
  I view this work as very important.
  Regards,
        -- Guy

"Kevin C. Almeroth" wrote:
> 
> 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