All things related to multicast

["William F. Maton" <>]

On Thu, 13 May 2004, Chris Rapier wrote:

> Tom Pusateri wrote:
> > Their choice will be either the easiest or the cheapest and this depends
> > on how well the application is written and who's footing the bill.
>
> I realy think this is a main reason but I'd also have to include inertia. 
> People

A big part of it is interia, but that isn't the cause.  It's more the
result.

In my observation, multicast still carries the bandwidth stigma.  If I
mention multicast to any ISP or local network admin I run into, the
resulting comment is very similar: "Oh, that requires a lot of bandwidth."

The discussion then generally boils down to me pointing out the their
USENet news server will generally out-use a connection many more times
than multicast could ever.  Once that point is conceded, it's now down to
figuring out where the applications are, and again getting over the stigma
that existing multicast apps are just some other academia-nerd tool.

[snip]
> conference calls is that the other person *can't* see you press the mute 
> button,
> doodle, or make exasperated faces.

Conference calls will probably be the magic application that will push
multicast out from it's sheltered existence, but even then, I don't see
that many people wanting to do that ("Wow!  I really do look goofy in
front of a camera...I'm not doing that again!") ....

wfms