Re: How do you put a TV station on the Mbone?

["Jeffrey S. Young" <young () jsyoung net>]

On 04/05/2011, at 1:54 AM, George Bonser <gbonser () seven com> wrote:

> > Multicast is an elegant solution to a dwindling problem set.  
>
> And that is fundamentally where we disagree.  I see this as not
> "elegant" at all.  It is a fundamental part of the protocol suite.  It
> is no more "elegant" than unicast.  I also believe that it will be the
> wireless operators that bring this back to widespread use as wireless
> devices are used for more than simply placing phone calls.  Time will
> tell, but it looks like the total use of multicast for content delivery
> is currently increasing.  It just isn't increasing in the realm of home
> internet providers, yet, but I believe it will as people use home
> internet for things that they had traditionally used other services for
> such as broadcast radio and tv.
I dunno,

I think it's elegant, in think Deering did an incredible job to
create it and some many years ago I played a role to bring
multicast to the Internet at large.  I believed that multicast
would play a huge role in the delivery of content, then.  

Trouble was that the way that people want to consume
video means most of it is time-shifted.  Folks in charge of
networks didn't understand the technology and marketing
people thought turning on multicast meant giving something 
away.  I finally settled on the notion that multicast is a tool
for service providers/enterprises to use but that it wouldn't 
ever be as pervasive as I'd hoped.

As for wireless operators?  The wireless medium itself is a 
broadcast network, why bother with multicast?

jy