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IETF Mulls Standard For Multimedia Messaging

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the how-to-kill-the-internet dept.

ennuiner writes: "NetworkWorld is running a story this week about the IETF's efforts to help create a universal standard for multimedia messaging. According to the article, a new protocol is needed because the volume of mp3 traffic on AOL could reach the point "to either swamp out the rest of the Internet or to require major engineering.""

6 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Screen names? by Cato+the+Elder · · Score: 2, Informative

    The last proposal I remember reading (admitedly, this was Spring '00 when the IMPP group list degenerated into flamewars and I stopped following it) was simply to tag things with username@service or impp://service/username. There's several solutions, I'm not sure which one they're going with but it shouldn't be a big issue.

  2. Re:The net to a halt..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    actually the article general refers to reducing bandwidth for multimedia files including but not limited to mp3s as well as voice chat / text.

  3. Re:UDP is what they are concerned about. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    The probability of this happening is about zero. Any network programmer worth half a grain of salt would know about the problems inherent in using UDP, and for general MP3 file sharing, etc, they would integrate a TCP based transport (AIMster already does this, as do many others. Think /dcc for IM clients)


    You would probably be amused by the SIP specification, then, which is what SIMPLE is based on.
  4. Re:MBone by Graymalkin · · Score: 3, Informative

    The overhead for switching from IP to some other protocol is expensive (don't bother pointing out IP being wrapped in another protocol like ATM because I don't see ATM equipment being cheap or easy on the processing power). Besides which the headend links where IP is converted to some other addressing scheme are still going to be swamped with traffic flowing in and out of them. The problem isn't IP the problem is not enough bandwidth on the local end to meet the demand generated at the local end.

    --
    I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
  5. Re:WHAT?!?! by Cato+the+Elder · · Score: 3, Informative

    The reason the author's of the article are worried is that SIMPLE, the new instant messaging interconnect protocol, supports UDP as well as TCP. UDP has no congestion control. It is horrible to transfer large files with as most applications end up resending too many packets. This could, in fact, bring backbone segments down.

    Of course "Its not the end of the world" The end of the article even said that it wasn't a "showstopper" for SIMPLE. But it is a genuine problem.

  6. Re:Just because it is impressive at face value... by iabervon · · Score: 4, Informative

    The real issue is the possibility that your client will use UDP. UDP is normally fine, but it doesn't handle reliable delivery, and people using it who want reliability won't necessarily do so correctly (i.e., by using TCP, not UDP).

    UDP is intended for things like realtime audio. If a packet gets dropped, the receiver doesn't want that packet anyway. (I.e., If packet 3 gets dropped, the receiver will play packets 1, 2, nothing, 4, 5). For file transfer, you want every packet, so that you get the whole thing eventually. If you use UDP (and, in particular, if everyone uses UDP), you'll get a lot of resends in a non-optimal pattern.

    So the problem isn't in sending files as packets, it's in sending the packets in an inefficient way. Essentially, they're worried that it will be done like NFS instead of like FTP.