Does Your Uplink Multicast?

Posted by Cliff on Monday December 10, 2001 @10:35AM from the better-network-performance dept.

knof asks: "It seems like the big ISPs want to waste bandwidth, because they don't support technologies like multicast, at least here in Germany. As far as I know the only way to get multicast access is to setup a feed to the MBone or to use the DFN (Deutsches ForschungsNetz) if you're a student, which I am not. Is it expensive or difficult for ISPs to make their networks multicast aware? How is the situation in other countries? And are there any ISPs in Germany which are Multicast friendly?" It would be interesting to know how much of the Internet is capable of multicasting. Even here in the US, I don't believe it's getting widely used. Is this changing?

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Multicast on an ISP is bad by Snowfox · 2001-12-10 11:36 · Score: 1, Funny

Multicasting is bad. A lot of games use it, and that could chew up a LOT of bandwidth, certainly enough to saturate the 10mbit NIC or USB connection used for many broadband setups.
Even in our own office, I wish we could kill multicasting. We make games here, and in the evening, a lot of groups of guys are playing games that spew enough multicast packets to bring our 100mbit network to its knees. (Yes, we're using switches, not hubs.) Playstation 2 debugging uses a network connection between the PS2 and PC. Debugging becomes slow as molasses unless you unplug your uplink or put a 2nd NIC in and connect to your PS2 TOOL directly.