Sorta OT: IP Multicasting

Tue Apr 23 10:50:23 UTC 2002

On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, Torsten Blum wrote:

> > Yes, but how do I get those multicast packets to flow over my network? It
> > seems the Mbone has dropped of the face of the net and everyone still
> > doing multicast is doing it natively so if your transits aren't multicast
> > capable you're out of luck.

> You are a customer. Request it from your transit provider. If that still
> doesnt work, take your money to someone who offers what you want.

Sure, if I _really_ want multicast I can do that. But the thing is, I
haven't actually used it, so how do I know if it's worth the trouble?

> In many cases the lack of customer demand prevents deployment in ISP networks
> ways too often IMHO. Even if there are engineers who want to deploy it the
> lack of demand from paying customers makes it a low priority task if
> something happens at all.

It would help if there was some way for customers to experience multicast
so they can see if this is something they want.