[140118] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: How do you put a TV station on the Mbone?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Patrick W. Gilmore)
Mon May 2 14:54:26 2011
From: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick@ianai.net>
In-Reply-To: <8BA5FFDC-871A-4DB5-9B94-FD960B8E20BF@puck.nether.net>
Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 14:53:35 -0400
To: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Apr 29, 2011, at 8:46 PM, Jared Mauch wrote:
> I think this is sadly the truth. There are some problems that can be =
solved by multicast, but I've seen the number of customer requests for =
v4 multicast go by the wayside over the years. The only people that are =
generally interested are the conference venues for technical things, =
e.g.: RIPE, ARIN/NANOG, APRICOT, etc. =20
>=20
> Plus, conferences like NANOG have beamed the video back to some other =
site for fanout as well, for both unicast and multicast.
>=20
> The problems at Layer7 and below are solvable with market forces. =
They're all 8/9 issues, about the content providers wanting to be =
paid-per-subscriber/viewer. They don't want to know how few people are =
actually tuned in at that moment in some cases. I'm sure they want to =
be paid some fraction of that cost that goes to your TV Transport =
conduit provider.
I'm not at all certain that this is a political problem. I believe it =
is more of a user need / want problem (which I guess you could classify =
as "layer > 7" if you want).
The occasional large live "event" - and when I say occasional, I mean =
not a few per year - likely could be helped if there were a magic wand =
to wave which made multicast work for no CapEx or OpEx and perfectly =
billed. But the vast majority of traffic cannot be served by =
multi-cast.
The real cost of multi-cast (when it works at all!) may be too great for =
the small benefit, even ignoring the billing mechanism.
People's proclivities change. As a vendor / supplier / company who gets =
paid, we have to adjust to the wishes of the people paying us as best we =
can. Or someone else will.
--=20
TTFN,
patrick
