The 100 Gbit/s problem in your network
Doug Barton
dougb at dougbarton.us
Tue Feb 12 06:06:07 UTC 2013
On 02/11/2013 03:52 PM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
> One of us has a different dictionary than everyone else.
I'm not sure it's different dictionaries, I think you're talking past
each other.
Video on demand and broadcast are 2 totally different animals. For VOD,
multicast is not a good fit, clearly. But for broadcast, it has a lot of
potential. Most of the issues with people wanting to pause, rewind, etc.
are already handled by modern DVRs, even with live programming.
What I haven't seen yet in this discussion (and sorry if I've missed it)
is the fact that every evening every broadcast network sends out hour
after hour of what are essentially "live" broadcasts, in the sense that
they were not available "on demand" before they were aired "on TV" that
night. In addition to live broadcasts, this nightly programming is ideal
for multicast, especially since nowadays most of that programming is
viewed off the DVR at another time anyway. So filling up that DVR (or
even watching it live) could happen over multicast just as well as it
could happen over unicast.
But more importantly, what's missing from this conversation is that the
broadcast networks, the existing cable/satellite/etc. providers, and
everyone else who has a multi-billion dollar vested interest in the way
that the business is structured now would fight this tooth and nail. So
we can engineer all the awesome solutions we want, they are
overwhelmingly unlikely to actually happen.
Doug
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