Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?

Tue Jan 9 18:51:09 UTC 2007

The available address space for multicast in IPv4 is limited. IPv6  
vastly expands this space. And here, I may have been guilty of  
putting the cart before the horse. Inter-AS multicast does not exist  
today because the motivators are not there. It is absolutely  
possible, but providers have to want to do it. Consumers need to see  
some benefit from it. Again, the benefit needs to be seen by a large  
market. Providers make decisions in the interest of their bottom  
line. A niche service is not a motivator for inter-AS multicast. If  
demand for variety in service provider selection grows with the  
proliferation of IPTV, we may see the required motivation for inter- 
AS multicast, which places us in a position moving to the large  
multicast space available in IPv6.

Gian Anthony Constantine
Senior Network Design Engineer
Earthlink, Inc.

On Jan 9, 2007, at 1:09 PM, Joe Abley wrote:

>
> On 9-Jan-2007, at 13:04, Gian Constantine wrote:
>
>> You are correct. Today, IP multicast is limited to a few small  
>> closed networks. If we ever migrate to IPv6, this would instantly  
>> change. One of my previous assertions was the possibility of  
>> streaming video as the major motivator of IPv6 migration. Without  
>> it, video streaming to a large market, outside of multicasting in  
>> a closed network, is not scalable, and therefore, not feasible.  
>> Unicast streaming is a short-term bandwidth-hogging solution  
>> without a future at high take rates.
>
> So you are of the opinion that inter-domain multicast doesn't exist  
> today for technical reasons, and those technical reasons are fixed  
> in IPv6?
>
>
> Joe
>

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