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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.""

1 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. 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.