All things related to multicast

["Thomas Kernen" <>]

> Most major telephone companies are in the process of defining their 
> next
> generation IP architectures to support multicast to the home for IP
> Video delivery.  Many of the architectural discussions I've been 
> exposed
> to include the use of SSM to the edge and IGMPv3 in the home.  IPv6 
> and
> MLD are out there on the horizon from my view and while the
> architectures do not currently support subscribers as multicast 
> sources,
> they provide the majority of the plumbing necessary to allow for that.
> There are a growing number of early adopters that have implemented IP
> Video networks with PIM, SSM and some flavor of IGMP in the STBs.
> That's the first major commercial push of IP Multicast into the home
> that I'm aware of, albeit in a "walled garden".

It's great to hear that vendors are finally understanding SSM and 
IGMPv3, when I first started working on a Triple Play network design 3 
years ago, vendors were only discovering the use of multicast and 
IGMPv2, so Set Top Boxes with IGMPv3 was a long long way down the road. 
But practially I still havn't come across a network that is up and 
running with v3 STBs and SSM.

Thomas