All things related to multicast

[Russ Hobby <>]

Hi All,

I have been asked a question from a researcher who's project has been 
trying to use multicast for some time with many problems, and she asked me 
"Are we trying to do the impossible?"

Their particular use of multicast relies on multiple multicast connections 
and for them to be set up in a timely fashion.  It is the setup time for a 
connection with which they have been having trouble.  Connections can take 
up to several minutes to be established.  They have worked the problem out 
with a couple of campuses and a gigapop to get it to work (which had to 
wait for new router codes to be installed in several places).  However 
every time they go to a new site, they are likely to have the problem again 
and they have to work it through those network engineers.

So the researcher is asking if they should give up on multicast and 
redesign their application.  What do you think?

Russ