On 04/05/2011, at 1:54 AM, George Bonser <gbon...@seven.com> wrote:
>> >> Multicast is an elegant solution to a dwindling problem set. > > And that is fundamentally where we disagree. I see this as not > "elegant" at all. It is a fundamental part of the protocol suite. It > is no more "elegant" than unicast. I also believe that it will be the > wireless operators that bring this back to widespread use as wireless > devices are used for more than simply placing phone calls. Time will > tell, but it looks like the total use of multicast for content delivery > is currently increasing. It just isn't increasing in the realm of home > internet providers, yet, but I believe it will as people use home > internet for things that they had traditionally used other services for > such as broadcast radio and tv. > > I dunno, I think it's elegant, in think Deering did an incredible job to create it and some many years ago I played a role to bring multicast to the Internet at large. I believed that multicast would play a huge role in the delivery of content, then. Trouble was that the way that people want to consume video means most of it is time-shifted. Folks in charge of networks didn't understand the technology and marketing people thought turning on multicast meant giving something away. I finally settled on the notion that multicast is a tool for service providers/enterprises to use but that it wouldn't ever be as pervasive as I'd hoped. As for wireless operators? The wireless medium itself is a broadcast network, why bother with multicast? jy