Re: The 100 Gbit/s problem in your network

[Doug Barton <dougb () dougbarton us>]

On 02/11/2013 03:52 PM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
> One of us has a different dictionary than everyone else.

I'm not sure it's different dictionaries, I think you're talking past 
each other.

Video on demand and broadcast are 2 totally different animals. For VOD, 
multicast is not a good fit, clearly. But for broadcast, it has a lot of 
potential. Most of the issues with people wanting to pause, rewind, etc. 
are already handled by modern DVRs, even with live programming.

What I haven't seen yet in this discussion (and sorry if I've missed it) 
is the fact that every evening every broadcast network sends out hour 
after hour of what are essentially "live" broadcasts, in the sense that 
they were not available "on demand" before they were aired "on TV" that 
night. In addition to live broadcasts, this nightly programming is ideal 
for multicast, especially since nowadays most of that programming is 
viewed off the DVR at another time anyway. So filling up that DVR (or 
even watching it live) could happen over multicast just as well as it 
could happen over unicast.

But more importantly, what's missing from this conversation is that the 
broadcast networks, the existing cable/satellite/etc. providers, and 
everyone else who has a multi-billion dollar vested interest in the way 
that the business is structured now would fight this tooth and nail. So 
we can engineer all the awesome solutions we want, they are 
overwhelmingly unlikely to actually happen.

Doug