All things related to multicast

[Simon Leinen <>]

Marshall Eubanks writes:
> That is good to know. I specifically spoke to people from
> continental Europe about this, and of course in the UK things can be
> different.

Apologies, I know Europe can be confusing[1].  Even within just
continental Europe there's lots of different countries, each with its
own little "national research and education network" (NREN).  In some
countries, very few students live in dorms, in others - as you heard -
they have to get connectivity elsewhere, in some countries they
connect to the NREN either through university networks or directly.

For SWITCH (Switzerland), I can say there are very few dormitories at
universities.  As for the campus networks here, I would say about a
third of the larger ones are fully multicast-enabled.

SURFnet, the Dutch NREN, has a project ("Fiber to the dormitory") to
connect dorms directly to the NREN, if I understand correctly.  They
also offer an ADSL service to other home users (in most European
countries, the incumbent telco's ADSL service can be resold by other
ISPs), and there seems to be a multicast pilot over that as well.

European NRENs are surveyed yearly by an organization called "TERENA",
and the results can be found here:

    http://www.terena.org/activities/compendium/

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to contain any information on either
NREN multicast support or dorm connections.  I'll try to get that
changed (for 2009 at the earliest )-:
-- 
Simon.

[1] http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2007/pulp-fiction-royale-p1.php