All things related to multicast

[William Caban <>]

Hi Everyone:

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First, sorry if this is not the right place to post this message.
Please, let me know.
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I'm wondering if anyone has the same, probably crazy, ideas as I do.

I was thinking on the advantages multicast can offer when disasters
occurs
and everyone want to reach their family or see the news.  For example,
on
Tuesday morning it was very difficult to do a phone call to NY but the
network infrastructure was there, free.  Personally that was the only
way I manage to reach family and friends there during the morning hours.

Also, sometimes it it was just impossible to access unicast video
streaming
over the internet. I don't have a TV with me but a laptop.

Why not take a known group of ports (ie. 911, 9110-9119 {I don't know if
they
are in use by other apps.}) and create "multicast-groups" on different
multicast
address for video and audio so that organizations such as the American
Red Cross
can use them to intercommunicate families simultaneously, and news can
be "broadcast"
over a particular multicast "channel" (port)....

Imagine 300 person calling their family, they need 300 phones or calls
and they only
hear them. On a single multicast address you can allocate much more...
True, you need
300 mics. and/or cameras but that can be a simple embedded wireless
device and they
can talk and see them. This can be a very valid, interesting and useful
research (I'm sure
someone is working on that).

Also, I really think a single 12Mbps stream with the news is much better
than a
thousand 128Kbps concurrent stream. Imagine 100 news station and a
thousand
users on each one on unicast, now imagine the same 100 news station and
the same
thousand users on multicast. Its 12Mbps versus 120Mbps.

--- sorry if I'm dreaming but I think multicast based services should
move to higher
level and that the current multicast is ready for prime time.


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Again, sorry if this is not the right place to post this message.
Please, let me know.
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--William Caban