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Is the MBone / Multicast Dead?

Posted by Cliff on from the lapsing-into-obscurity dept.

"Zow" asks: "I've been looking into a P2P web-caching scheme and noticed that Squid already has the underpinnings for this using multicast, which seems like a reasonable way to do P2P requests. Reasonable, except for the fact that all my web searches for multicast in general and the MBone in particular mostly turn up sites more than 3 years old. Even the MBone FAQ was pulled because it was so old. MBone.com now belongs to a domain squatter. So, what happened? Did everyone give up on Multicast for all practical purposes? Is everyone who was interested in multicast now working on Internet2? Is it only being used for LAN applications? What caused this loss of interest? Cheap bandwidth? Lack of applications? Lack of network support? Unforeseen technical difficulties? Is it still a viable technology for anything?"

1 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. I want multicast yesterday... by mcelrath · · Score: 4, Interesting
    This is important. Multicast is the single most important enabling technology for internet broadcasts of any kind. Unfortunately, those in the best position to be pushing this technology are busy suing related technologies out of existance. (RIAA/MPAA)

    It is said IP6 has much better multicast support, but I'm not holding my breath to see IP6 either. From my limited perspective, there is ZERO incentive for any ISP to go IP6.

    Someone with serious broadcasting interests needs to start pushing the buttons of major ISP's to get them routing multicast to everyone. NBC? ABC? FOX? ClearChannel? Anyone?

    I've been ripping TV to mpeg for a while now, and downloading the stuff I miss from various P2P networks, and it's just awesome. Watch what I want, when I want to watch it. This is the future. But all existing P2P networks are unreliable (but props to ed2k for being the least unreliable). Who wants to start a company who will negotiate with content providers for broadcast rights, and transmit it over the internet. Don't do all the DRM crap, but instead let people pay for it, or place a few-minute video ad at the beginning of the content they download. I would do this in a second over P2P networks if it is more reliable (i.e. multicasted).

    -- Bob

    --
    1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.