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> [The Rolling Stones] actually streamed a concert on the platform in November of that year, using an online provider named MBone for some reason.. The MBone w

> [The Rolling Stones] actually streamed a concert on the platform in November of that year, using an online provider named MBone for some reason.. The MBone was not a "provider", it was an IP multicast network. This was the only way to efficiently stream video content to thousands of simultaneous clients before the advent of CDNs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone

jandrese 9y ago
MBone lost its reason to exist when the internet backbone turned out to be much easier to upgrade than the edges. There's not much need to implement a complicated proxy system to save bandwidth on the backbone when almost everybody is constrained by their last mile link. For years I thought TV stations might connect to the MBone to do simulcasts for people on the Internet once broadband became widespread, but the world moved on before it could become a reality. Part of me still thinks this is a missed opportunity but it's too late to cry over it now.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  My internship, in 2006, involved working on an IPTV prototype for Philips. I remember working on a multicast server and the set-top-box client -- the server had a DVB-T card, and rebroadcast all the BBC channels over the LAN. Since the stream was always there, changing channel was extremely fast. DVB broadcasts information packets regularly, containing the TV schedule and so on. These were also forwarded over IP, and then cached by the STB. It was neat, but presumably most of the multicast stuff was abandoned not long after I left. Someone else worked on a system to help the user schedule their TV around the broadcast times.
  - _joel 9y ago
    The problem with using multicast for content delivery is more down to the subscriber end and how ISPs manage their networks. I worked on a (recent) project that uses multicast in the broadcast context at the mezzanine level. When you've got full control of the network, end to end, it works a lot better.
    - jandrese 9y ago
      The subscriber end...and the goddamn Internet backbone. You can't route multicast across the core, which is a huge impediment to its adoption. There was a vicious circle where the core didn't do multicast so the big iron routers didn't put multicast support in hardware, which made it impossible to support multicast on the core...
- rkeene2 9y ago
  AT&T U-verse uses multicast for live TV streams. They start off as unicast streams but after about 60s the multicast stream is picked up.
fulafel 9y ago
IPTV still uses routed multicast, it just doesn't work on the internet anymore.
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jandrese 9y ago

MBone lost its reason to exist when the internet backbone turned out to be much easier to upgrade than the edges. There's not much need to implement a complicated proxy system to save bandwidth on the backbone when almost everybody is constrained by their last mile link. For years I thought TV stations might connect to the MBone to do simulcasts for people on the Internet once broadband became widespread, but the world moved on before it could become a reality. Part of me still thinks this is a missed opportunity but it's too late to cry over it now.

Symbiote 9y ago
My internship, in 2006, involved working on an IPTV prototype for Philips. I remember working on a multicast server and the set-top-box client -- the server had a DVB-T card, and rebroadcast all the BBC channels over the LAN. Since the stream was always there, changing channel was extremely fast. DVB broadcasts information packets regularly, containing the TV schedule and so on. These were also forwarded over IP, and then cached by the STB. It was neat, but presumably most of the multicast stuff was abandoned not long after I left. Someone else worked on a system to help the user schedule their TV around the broadcast times.
- _joel 9y ago
  The problem with using multicast for content delivery is more down to the subscriber end and how ISPs manage their networks. I worked on a (recent) project that uses multicast in the broadcast context at the mezzanine level. When you've got full control of the network, end to end, it works a lot better.
  - jandrese 9y ago
    The subscriber end...and the goddamn Internet backbone. You can't route multicast across the core, which is a huge impediment to its adoption. There was a vicious circle where the core didn't do multicast so the big iron routers didn't put multicast support in hardware, which made it impossible to support multicast on the core...
rkeene2 9y ago
AT&T U-verse uses multicast for live TV streams. They start off as unicast streams but after about 60s the multicast stream is picked up.

fulafel 9y ago

IPTV still uses routed multicast, it just doesn't work on the internet anymore.

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