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Is the MBone / Multicast Dead?
"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?"
Multicast is a delightful concept. Consider that it would make it possible for everyone in the country to watch a streaming video or listen to a music station with one and only one original stream from the source.
The traffic would be carried only by those routers who had downstream listeners, and not carried where there were none. What a delight.
What's the problem? It would require the owners of all those routers to cooperate with each other. I think that's enough to kill it right there. (Yes, there are some technical issues as well)
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
MBone is basically an IPv4 testbed for applications which will become available to endusers with IPv6. If you're looking for multicast, look for IPv6. Multicast also does not fit in today's business models which tend to see internet providers as downstream for centralized content producers. Often even a fixed IP address is not available with consumer flat rate plans. That should give you an idea where most customers fit into ISPs' plans.
Modern multicast runs natively across and between isps that support it using PIM, MSDP, and MBGP. If anything the portions of the internet wich support interdomain ulticast are far more extensive (and more importantly robust) than they were in the tunneled era...
a list of isp's the support multicast services for customers is at:
http://www.multicast-isp-list.com/index2002.html
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.
I've worked on a Mid-2001 online concert featuring the return of a very famous Italian, singer, Mina. The event was available in multicast for people connected to Italian ISPs Inwind and Libero/IOL/Infostrada (totalling around 7 - 8 million subscribers), Unicast for others. I personally configured the front-end routers with the PIM Rendez-vous point :-)
ISPs have merged, pages have changed, but by chance the concert page is still up, although it's in Italian.
Now, I'm working @ a Satellite ISP and we're streaming Multicast all the time (both windows media streams and a data-push protocol which needs no return channel (carousel + heavy FEC)).
Multicast dead?
*not quite*
I'm also about to multicast-stream TV off 802.11b at my house just to see how it works!
P.S.
By the way, I'd HAPPILY kick the last Microsoft boxes out of my server room. Does anybody know of a multicast acquisition-streaming platform which could be a drop-in replacement for Windows Media Encoders + Windows Media Server?
Must work with Windows Media Player on the other side!
Vacuum cleaners suck. Kings rule.
Since then, the term "MBone" came to refer to the subset of the public Internet that is connected via IP multicast routing. (Nowadays, the multicast routing protocol that's most commonly used is PIM-SM.) So, the "MBone" still exists, although it's still not nearly as widespread as many of us would like.