----- Original Message ----- > From: "Simon Lockhart" <si...@slimey.org>
> On Fri Apr 29, 2011 at 01:48:51PM -0400, Jay Ashworth wrote: > > Will they not complain about having their equipment utilization go up > > with no recompense -- for something that is only of benefit to > > commercial customers of some other entity? > > Sorry, but are your eyeballs not already paying you for that bandwidth > that they are consuming. Multicast merely optimises that across your > network. > > You have 200,000 eyeballs all watching the royal wedding on youtube, > at 2Mbps per stream. > > or > > You have 200,000 eyeballs all watching the royal wedding on multicast, > with no more than one copy of 2Mbps going over each of your backbone links. > > I know which one I'd prefer. He's the devil, I'm just his advocate. Good. :-) > The only place it causes some confusion over charging is if you're the content > ISP which is originating the multicast. How do you charge your TV Channel > customer? Sure, it won't be 2Mbps at your normal per Mbps rate, but equally it > won't be 2Mbps * the number of end users watching the stream. It'll be > somewhere in the middle, probably tending far more towards the 2Mbps end. Sure; people who supply lots of bandwidth to content providers *now* will probably be unhappy about this idea, but... no business is guaranteed its business model; that observation goes back at *least* to Robert Heinlein's first short story, "Lifeline" from 1954(?)... and I *think* he was quoting Supreme Court Justice Learned Hand, but haven't been able to source it. The real problem I see myself is that *the Mbone has to be pervasive* (or mostly so) for this to be a worthwhile investment for providers. Not to mention it being practical for eyeballs to *get* to it; haven't seen that HOWTO pointer yet from anyone. :-)