All things related to multicast

["Kevin C. Almeroth" <>]

Here are the minutes from the meeting in Boulder...
also see the new WWW page:  http://multicast.internet2.edu/mcast-v6.shtml

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At the Boulder Joint Techs meeting (July 30, 2000), we held 
the first joint IPv6/Multicast working group meetings.

Kevin went through an ad hoc set of slides.  The main points
are as follows:

Yes, there is interest and a motivation for doing multicast
in IPv6.  

There is a question of whether to do ASM and/or SSM.  The
general consensus was that it makes sense to start with SSM.
However, this does not assume that we will never do ASM, but
SSM is more straightforward and requires fewer pieces.

To get started, we need to assess where we are in terms of
vendor support.  This will be investigated and reported by
those interested in working on this project.

We also need to develop a few guiding principles.  The first 
and most important is that we are going to do this right.  Like 
the early days of Internet2 multicast, the decision should be 
that there will not be any tunnels; there should be native 
support only from the beginning.

The necessary pieces for supporting IPv6 SSM are: the network
requires PIM, MBGP, and MLDv2; hosts require MLDv2, IPv6,
and application support.

   * We are not far from having the network support.  In fact,
     we aren't sure what we have and what we do not.  We need
     volunteers to do testing.

   * The feeling is that we are further from having host support.
     But, adding MLDv2 support and modifying applications should
     be relatively easy.

The qualitative tasks that were presented as important for
going forward include the following:

   * Create awareness among vendors and those who would be 
     interested in working on this project.

   * Encourage vendors to get busy rolling out IPv6 multicast 
     support.  This includes reporting the status of debugging 
     and testing.

   * Set a soft target deadline for IPv6 multicast testing and 
     roll-out.

   * Investigate the effects of IPv6 multicast on related 
     protocols.  For example, mtrace for IPv6, support for 
     SNMP-based tools, SIP, etc.

More quantitative, the tasks include:

   * Develop a joint WWW page to report the status of this 
     project.

   * Contact network vendors to learn the status of deployment
     and report it via the WWW page.

   * Contact OS vendors to learn the status of deployment
     and report it via the WWW page.

   * Contact application vendors to learn the status of 
     deployment and report it via the WWW page.

   * Anyone interested in participating in testing should
     send an email to Kevin Almeroth 
()
     with a who's who of information to be posted on the
     WWW page.

   * Contact the WIDE folks to see if they have started working
     on IPv6 multicast yet.