How do you put a TV station on the Mbone? (was: Royal Wedding...)

Fri Apr 29 17:12:54 UTC 2011

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ryan Malayter" <malayter at gmail.com>

> On Apr 28, 11:14 pm, Jay Ashworth <j... at baylink.com> wrote:
> > > (cough)multicast(cough)
> >
> > But... but... how do we count the viewers, then?
> 
> Isn't the real problem with global multicast: "How do we ultimately
> bill the broadcaster for all that traffic amplification that happened
> *inside* every other AS?" It seems like you'd have to do per-packet
> accounting at every router, and coordinate billing/reporting amongst
> all providers that saw those packets.

See, now, I expected to hear that objection.

Internet engineers are prone to try to solve this problem in favor of
the viewer, and their networks -- with their networks winning in case
of a push.

*Program providers*, OTOH, have a completely different set of "optimal"
parameters -- many of which are directly at odds with that approach, and
most of which are completely ignored by Internet engineering types when 
working on this stuff.

And OTGH, even if, say, a local TV station wanted to let people do this
sort of thing, *the people they get their programs from* -- both at the
Network and the "provider to Network" level -- will expect to have their
own say in the matter.

*Certainly* there should be a Multicast Cloud, and an easy way for 
program providers to dump things into it.  But, as you say, who's going
to pay for it is an issue, and how one enforces that is another even
more contentious one.

Layer 9 is a *bitch*, isn't it?

So: if I *wanted* to put my video in the multicast cloud... how would 
I do it?  I do, after all, now work for a TV network which sells things;
this is not an idle question for me: the more people who can see me,
the better. 

Is it a nice, packaged howto, with easily built code?

Pointers?

Cause it seems to me that the fewer speedbumps there are along the way,
the sooner it will happen, all that nassty, nassty commerce, notwithstanding.

Cheers,
-- jra