[140072] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: How do you put a TV station on the Mbone?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Martin Millnert)
Fri Apr 29 20:01:42 2011
In-Reply-To: <20110429234405.GA31563@srv03.cluenet.de>
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 20:01:37 -0400
From: Martin Millnert <millnert@gmail.com>
To: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
Daniel,
On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 7:44 PM, Daniel Roesen <dr@cluenet.de> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 05:51:25PM -0400, Jay Ashworth wrote:
>> > Imagine: multicast internet radio! Awesome!
>>
>> That would, indeed, be awesome; when everyone in my office was listening to
>> the royal wedding, there would be a *much* higher chance of them all being
>> in sync.
>
> That reminds me of 9/11. When the tragic event unfolded, we sat in the
> office. News made the rounds verbally, and people started looking for
> streaming services at their personal desks (no TVs around). People
> pretty quickly gave up trying to find streams and news portals which were
> actually working fine and the crowd gathering behind me watching over my
> shoulder became bigger and bigger.
>
> Why? Because I was in the fortunate position of being able to watch an
> Mbone multicast stream of some news TV broadcaster... cannot remember
> wether it was CNN or BBC or someone else entirely. Back then, a collegue
> was playing around with IP multicast and my desktop machine had connectivity
> to his Mbone-connected playground. :)
>
> IP multicast was the only way for us to see what happened, live.
> Unicast failed miserably.
+10
I've been meaning to write something similar. Multicast infrastructure
in place absolutely and certainly has a role to play in
"humanity-wide" events.
Also, having a 'free' distribution channel for those moving images
carrying such licensing that it does not matter how many eyeballs see
them, could be valuable as well.
I made sure to get this capability in the network I worked on last.
Cheers,
Martin
