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IETF Mulls Standard For Multimedia Messaging
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.""
My question is, since AOL uses unique screen names instead of ID numbers, how will they handle screen name overlaps between the instant messenger databases?
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
The article seems to make some claim that mp3's, video clips, photos, etc are different from file attachments. I've been able to attach files to ICQ for years, but you have to send direct. Maybe they mean the ability to send through ICQ's server. Or maybe AOL is going to add an "attach mp3" to replace "attach file" in the ICQ client and the usage will go way up.
Along that route, why clog up everyone's email servers with MP3's, when you can just upload it to a FTP server you and your friend have common access to?
Besides, lots of email systems are already set up to filter out large attachments.
After all, when transferring files, it only seems logical to use the File Transfer Protocol.
Hrm...
Legal implications for caching a copyrighted material? I try to download the new Backside boys track and I pull it from my ISP instead of a user on music city...is the ISP liable for spreading that work?
And while you're at it, why not just put it up on a good old WebDAV server that you both have access to, and it will appear magically (via Web Folders) in Windows Explorer (or the DAV file system on Linux or Mac OSX).
It's hard to imagine anything easier and more transparent than that.
- Online chat in it's various forms is popular.
- Folks are starting to use chat clients to send files to eachother.
- Chat is moving from text to audio or audio/video.
All of these features have been around for quite awhile, integrated and not. However they're now getting rolled into all-in-one applications that are popular. Also a critical number of folks have fast connections and are now comfortable going to the computer to send/recieve/interact.Big news? No. Entirely forseeable evolution is more like it.
Things like IRC already enables a lot a lot of these features, and so do the various video-whackoff online applications and big-scale internet telephony has been the promised for a few years now. But those are all small potatos compared to the market penetration of AOL IM / ICQ / MS Communicator / Yahoo Messenger. With these now offering these feature traffic is going up, up in a big way.
No need to download a specialized program, install it, and figure out which of your friends has the same or compatible ones. The big IM programs are pretty much ubiquitious in the mass market, heck they come pre-installed on many new computers. Co-workers, classmates, relatives, friends across the street or in distant parts of the world are going to be likely to have the software, all installed automagically as they upgrade their tried-'n-true chat programs.
So we're now back to the issue of cross-communication: How to get the AOLians to talk to the MSNers with the ICQites with the Yahoolies. A solution has been promised for text messages but now after all these years it's arriving just in time to be irrelevant, perhaps simply being the building block for a more versitile system.
So what are the big technical hurdles? Again, three:
- Directory Services: How to find and connect to folks.
- Interoperability: How to negotiate settings & protocols between various clients.
- Traffic Management: What to do with all of these packets streaming from the previously almost-all downloading users who now want to send streams of highspeed data upstream, LOTS of it (think teenagers on the phone!.)
So why is this an issue for NetworkWorld and not Teenbeat? Because directory services means some sort of servers, interoperability means protocols and that surging volume of low-latency traffic going upstream is going to upset the pricing and service model most broadband is built on.Again, none of this is new, it's just the matter of scale. Currently in most environments the 5% of folks who are considered "Top Talkers" account for over 50% of all traffic. What happens when half of the users become "Top Talkers"?
If you're selling webcams and mikes and soundcards and sticky applications that folks spend hours on and want lots of services from then it's all golden. However if you're an exec in the already shaky ISP market this is like seeing the first few seconds of an avalanche and knowing those that the avalanch has effectively started...
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
while all of them were oggling Napster, I looked at it, and asked "this is better than irc how?"
Maybe you were born knowing everything about IRC, but the rest of us had to learn it, and it was a pain at times.
With Napster, you load an app, type in the name of the song you want to hear, and download away! You don't have to invest time in finding a pirate mp3 channel and learning how to deal with all the different variants of file-serving bots. You don't have to suck up to 14 year old w4r3z d00dz to get what you want. You don't have to deal with the playground politics of the IRCops and the script-kiddie users.
Face it, using the big IRC networks has become like trying to hold a conversation in the middle of a grade school king-of-the-hill match. Trading mp3s is like trying to conduct a drug deal in the middle of the same melee. It can be done, but it's a pain, and napster offered an easier way.