All things related to multicast

[Scott Brown <>]

Just a quick comment on what is happening in the Internet at large, that you may be interested in.

It is about content, but also about technologies coming together at the same time.

Many Telco's actually have IPTV services running over Native Multicast, where they have implemented QOS on their last mile to create an environment for it. As you mention this is private and internal to footprint. However it is now beginning to take shape over the broadband side. You can see for instance using a combination of Native and AMT multicast that AT&T has deployed public Multicast support. Octoshape, the company I work for facilitates the streaming delivery for things like CNN.com Live, and NBA League pass over these broadband unmanaged  Multicast enabled infrastructures.

While it is true, it has spent many years in the dark, I believe it is quickly moving the opposite direction. 

There is a lot of reading material about it here if you are interested:

http://www.octoshape.com/showcase/juniper-openlab-multicast/

-Scott

On Dec 17, 2012, at 2:23 PM, Bill Owens <> wrote:

On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 10:37:24AM -0800, Joe St Sauver wrote:

1) I'd argue it's (almost) all about content.

By way of example, some time ago I looked for songs I liked on Youtube,
obviously a non-IP multicast content source. Now admittedly I have what my
kids refer to as "dinosaur rock" tastes (the radio stations are more
sensitive to aging egos, and normally refer to my market niche as "classic
rock" listeners), but it was ALL there. Any band or song I looked for, I
could find.

Or consider Netflix or Hulu: not total coverage, but a LOT more content than
IP multicast could ever offer.

I don't think that multicast has a role to play here; it's never been suited for applications with a broad catalog of content being served on demand. The best you could do would be a sort of streaming jukebox, and it was attempted a couple of times, but never caught on.

3) What does IP multicast availability look like in home broadband networks
these days? Can I get IP multicast support from Comcast, Centurylink,
Time Warner, and all the other "usual suspects" servicing home markets?

I have heard that some 'cable' companies use IP multicast to distribute streaming content within their networks; in that application it might make sense. In fact there are many ways that multicast can be used within a domain; it's only the inter-domain version that has never really found a use case. And in keeping with that, the companies who do use intra-domain multicast won't allow any of it to leak out, to their users or to their peers.

Bill.