multicast (was Re: Readiness for IPV6)

Chris Parker cparker at starnetusa.net
Tue Jul 9 15:53:17 UTC 2002


At 11:16 AM 7/9/2002 -0400, Leo Bicknell wrote:

>In a message written on Tue, Jul 09, 2002 at 10:06:10AM -0500, Chris 
>Parker wrote:
> > >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.
> >
> > Yahoo/Broadcast.com pushed this pretty heavily.  MS's own media player
> > supports multicast, so there definitely a *lot* of clients out there.
>
>There is a lot of client _SOFTWARE_ that supports it.  There are very
>few clients on multicast enabled networks.

I've got a couple million...  not that many use it, though.

> > There are a list of providers supporting multicast in conjunction with
> > Yahoo/Broadcast.com found at:
> >
> > http://www.broadcast.com/mcisp/
> >
> > I see quite a few cable and dialup providers on there ( and I work for
> > one of 'em... )
>
>It's a cute list.  Where's AT&T (with all the old @Home customers)?
>Where AOL?  Don't see UUNet either.

I didn't say it was ubiquitous.  While some are notably lacking, you
do have some larger networks on that list.  Note this is also just
partners/peers with Yahoo/Broadcast, not everyone who supports
multicast on their networks.

>Almost as important, people like Sprint are on the list.  Last I
>checked (admittedly, over a year ago) there was no multicast for
>Sprint DSL customers, and Sprint high speed customers had to
>specifically request it, it was not turned on by default.  Result,
>less than 1% of Sprint's customers actually had it turned on, I
>believe.

>I'd be suprised if 1% of _residential end users_ were on multicast
>enabled networks today.  Very surprised.

It may be a bit higher, but the number who access multicast content
is decidedly tiny.  More content would probably push it higher, as
much fun as it is watching the ISS live on Nasa TV, it does get a
bit dry.  :)

-Chris
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