multicast (was Re: Readiness for IPV6)

David Sinn dsinn at microsoft.com
Tue Jul 9 15:10:22 UTC 2002


There is also a "cart and horse" issue here:  Where is the pervasive
content?

Most content providers don't want multicast because it breaks their
billing model.  They can't tell how many viewers they have at a given
moment, what the average viewing time is, or any of the other things
that unicast allows them to determine and more importantly bill their
advertisers for.  There is no Nielsen's Ratings for multicast so that
advertisers could get a feel for how many eyeballs they are going to
hit.

Then add in the latest from Congress with regard to streaming audio over
the net, and you have a source payment issue making you not want to go
down the multicast path.  (Leaving Congress living up to their name as
being opposite of progress.)

Multicast is a great technology.  It just is stuck looking for a problem
to solve that doesn't create even more problems.

David

-----Original Message-----
From: Leo Bicknell [mailto:bicknell at ufp.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 09, 2002 7:52 AM
To: nanog at merit.edu
Subject: Re: multicast (was Re: Readiness for IPV6)



In a message written on Tue, Jul 09, 2002 at 10:39:35AM -0400, Jared
Mauch wrote:
> 	They aren't aware of the savings they can see, consider the
> savings too small, don't know how to configure, can't configure,
> break the config, etc.. the list goes on and on.

Speaking from a provider who used to run multicast, and now doesn't:

Customers don't want it.

I can count our customer requests for multicast on both hands for
the last two years.  Of those, only one thought it was important,
the rest were just playing with it.  In fact, pretty much the only
place we see it anymore is on RFP's from educational groups.

My own view is that customers don't want it, because end users
don't have it.  Dial up users will probably never get multicast.
So that leaves Cable Companies (good luck for them to do something
intelligent) or DSL providers (perhaps they might) to make it
happen.  If a few million end users could just 'get it', then people
running streaming services would be beating on backbone providers
to carry it around.

There is also a payment problem.  If a unicast bit enters your
network, you can be assured it takes one path to the destination.
When a multicast bit enters your network, it could take one path,
or it could take 50 paths through your network.  The latter does
cost the ISP more.  This also makes peering an issue, as many people
use ratio.  If there was a significant amount of multicast traffic,
hosting ISP's would send end-user ISP's one small stream that they
would then replicate.  That would pretty much make the ratio
completely opposite of what it is today, due to unicast streaming.

I'll be the first to jump on the multicast bandwagon, but I don't
work for an eyeball provider.  The first adopters need to be DSL
and cable modem providers, to the end user, on by default.  Then
we can go somewhere.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
Read TMBG List - tmbg-list-request at tmbg.org, www.tmbg.org



More information about the NANOG mailing list