All things related to multicast

[Bill Owens <>]

On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 08:54:48AM -0700, Russ Hobby wrote:
> Hi Bill,
> 
> Good question.  I think that using the network for phone calls and using 
> multicast are related but separate issues.  

Definitely; I should have been more clear in my note but I eventually did get 
on the conference bridge so I had to pay attention to the meeting ;) I didn't 
really intend to propose that we do VoIP to SIP or H.323 conference servers 
as a replacement for a bridge. That's arguably a step in the right direction 
- at least we'd be using our own networks - but I was actually hoping that we 
could do better. 

For example, on the MAN LAN call we sometimes discuss network topology. It 
would be really nice to have a shared whiteboard or desktop now and again. 
There are times when I have trouble figuring out who's talking in a 
conference, and seeing their face would help. And there are times I suspect 
they're giving me the hairy eyeball but I can't tell without video ;)

I have never liked the room-to-room videoconference thing, because the video 
is always crummy and you can't see anything, and because nobody ever uses the 
more advanced tools (not even document cameras or presentation servers). But 
we're all geeks, we could do cool things! If we wanted to, we could run MPEG 
video and 256k audio. 

>For conference calls, since the 
> Internet2 edial system supports SIP calls, I usually do my conference calls 
> over the network with a SIP softphone.  

Ben sent me the secret instructions, so if I can get a softphone working I'll 
try it. I'm really lame in the VoIP area, I've tried a couple of clients but 
never actually made a call work.

> I don't know what the answer is other than make it so easy they would not 
> think other than using multicast.

Ease of use is definitely an issue, but like I said - we're geeks, we should 
have some pride in being able to do this. And how can we expect other people 
to make use of these network capabilities if we don't even do it? Everyone I 
talk to is a network person, and they ought to have multicast on their LAN. 
If they don't we ought to shame them into it!

Bill.