multicast (was Re: Readiness for IPV6)

Tue Jul 9 15:55:17 UTC 2002

Hi,

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

At the risk of sounding somewhat cynical, I suspect the market driver 
for IP multicast will be what it often is for these sort of things: pr0n.

My prediction? When one of the big adult hosting speciality companies 
starts IP multicasting free full length "cable cut" R-rated adult films 
in watchable MPEG1 quality, people will begin lobbying their ISP's for 
IP multicast support.

Evidence supporting this assertion can be found in the popularity of 
events such as the Victoria Secret webcast, which reportedly drew 
more than a million viewers worldwide, even when streaming video was 
being done at postage-stamp-sized resolution. 

Of course, at the same time the pr0n channels get rolled out, there will 
also need to be something innocuous, like the "Field Hockey Channel" or
the "Brand-New-Bands-Live!-From-Small-Clubs Channel" so that people will 
be able to use those less-embarassing content choices as their nominal 
interest when calling to request IP multicast support: "Um, hi, my friends
who connect via ISP Foo up the street tell me that if you do something to
your network I can get the, uh, Field Hockey channel via IC muteypast. I'm, 
uh, a real big field hockey fan, and I'd really love to be able to watch, 
uh, field hockey on my PC."

>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.  

That's why they'll go ahead and use it as a tease/for the free publicity
they'll get if they're the first ones to do it. People have spent a lot
more on publicity stunts that would get a lot less coverage than this 
sort of thing would.

>There is no Nielsen's Ratings for multicast so that advertisers could 
>get a feel for how many eyeballs they are going to hit.

Some IP multicast products *do* offer the ability to track viewership 
(albeit at the cost of some degradation to IP multicast's otherwise 
essentially perfect scalability). Cisco's StreamWatch is one example that 
comes to mind. 

Regards,

Joe