All things related to multicast

[John Lyons <>]

On Tue, May 23, 2006 at 04:06:13PM +0100, Tim Chown wrote:
> So in IPv6 there is a scaleable address allocation system, and you can 
> avoid the inter-domain infrastructure - is there genuine hope to change
> the current deployment bottleneck (outside of the academic networks)?

There is hope to change the current situation but, IMHO advances are not
going to happen any time soon.

The main current reasons I see for a hold up in IPv6 multicast deployment
(outside NRENs) are :

1) Need to run latest (and not neccessarily greatest) code, particularly 
   on core routers. 

2) Lack of vendor support for all of the "magic foo" in all devices 
   (and at a reasonable price).

3) Lack of a business case for using IPv6 and consequently IPv6
   multicast.

Point one and two can hopefully be fixed over time. Point three is more 
troublesome.  

Considering the general apathy of much of the commercial world to IPv6 
in general it may be some time off before anything interesting happens to 
v6 multicast in the commercial world, (Well certainly inter-domain anyway).

John