All things related to multicast

[David Farmer <>]

To be discussed on the NTAC call today;

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The Multicast Working Group is being reconstituted and charged by the NTAC with making a recommendation about the state and use of native multicast on the Internet2 backbone. Secondarily, the working group will also consider recommendations to connectors, campuses, and peers as to their use of any Internet2 backbone native multicast services.

There have been a number of events that have prompted this activity:

• Any-source multicasting (ASM) has been deprecated for use in the interdomain context (RFC 8815), leaving source-specific multicasting as the remaining mode of operation for interdomain multicast;
  https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8815
• Many connectors and campuses have either discontinued support for multicast or have allowed multicast support to atrophy; 
• The implementation of the new packet platform of the Next-Generation Infrastructure project provides an opportunity to reevaluate what services should be offered by and to the community;
• Automatic Multicast Tunneling (AMT) is under active development by the IETF and provides a new overly deployment model for multicast without requiring end-to-end support of native multicast by all the network infrastructure between multicast sources and their receivers;

The reconstituted Multicast Working Group will make recommendations to the NTAC on the following:

• Should Internet2 continue to support native multicast on the backbone?
• Should Internet2 continue to support native multicast between and among members/connectors (downstream)?
• Should Internet2 continue to support native multicast with peers (eg, international peers)?
• What role does or should the Internet2 community play in new protocol development (such as AMT)?

Email list: 

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David Farmer              
Networking & Telecommunication Services
Office of Information Technology
University of Minnesota  
2218 University Ave SE        Phone: 612-626-0815
Minneapolis, MN 55414-3029   Cell: 612-812-9952
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