Re: Multicast Traffic on Backbones

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

On Sun, 10 June 2001, Joshua Goodall wrote:
> > I have found that most sales reps don't know what multicast is, or why it
> > is important to have.
>
> many network engineers glaze over at the mention of multicast. it
> takes some serious grey matter work to fathom the entire subject.

Essentially every major network operator has one network engineer
who can set up multicast for customers.  The problem is very few
networks have figured out how to turn multicast into a commercial
product. So if you don't find that one engineer, you are out of
luck.

Unicast streaming may be less efficient, but most providers can figure
out how to charge for it and make it a supported product.  Unfortunately
some folks have confused multimedia with multicast.  While I've seen
many multimedia multicast applications, I haven't seen one which can't
have its essential elements replicated by unicast streams.  Is there
a killer-ap for multicast?