[NANOG] would ip6 help us safeing energy ?

Sat Apr 26 18:42:32 UTC 2008

On Sat, 26 Apr 2008, Marc Manthey wrote:

> " IF we  would  use  multicast" streaming  ONLY,  for appropriet
> content , would `nt  this  " decrease " the overall internet traffic  ?

On one hand, the amount of content that is 'live' or 'continuous' and 
suitable for multicast streaming isn't s large percentage of overall 
internet traffic to begin with.  So the effect of moving most live content 
to multicast on the Internet would have little overall effect.

However, for some live content where the audience is either very large or 
concentrated on various networks, moving to multicast certainly has 
significant advantages in reducing traffic on the networks closest to the 
source or where the viewer concentration is high (particularly where the 
viewer numbers infrequently spikes significantly higher than the average).

But network providers make their money in part by selling bandwidth.  The 
folks who would need to push for multicast are the live/perishable content 
providers as they're the ones who'd benefit the most.  But if bandwidth is 
cheap they're not really gonna care.

> Isn´t this an argument for ip6 / greenip6 ;) aswell ?

It's an argument for decreasing traffic and improving network efficiency 
and scalability to handle 'flash crowd events'.  IPv6 has nothing to do 
with it.

Antonio Querubin
whois:  AQ7-ARIN