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it's a shame multicast isn't universally supported on the Internet. It'd make it possible to broadcast a live video to millions or billions of people straight

by jewel 6y ago

it's a shame multicast isn't universally supported on the Internet. It'd make it possible to broadcast a live video to millions or billions of people straight from a cell phone.

londons_explore 6y ago
There are a few countries where multicast is usable. It worked on 80+% of UK internet connections in circa 2008.
ForHackernews 6y ago
That was my first thought. What's needed to enable multicast? Work by ISPs?
- _jjkk 6y ago
  There is no obvious benefit to the ISP to serve multicast packets (so some kind of regulation would need to be crafted to force them to do so) In a world where denial of service attacks are cheap and ubiquitous, my first thought is that enabling multicast would be difficult to do without reducing the cost of debilitating DOS attacks.
  - Olipro 6y ago
    Well, there is. Say I'm an ISP with X million subscribers. Given a peering with Y GBit of throughput to someone like say, Twitch or Facebook; with multicast, I now only end up with a single load of data for each livestream coming over the pipe. However, this does require direct peerings. Multicast over the Internet is just not a thing. This could technically be built out with IPv6, but nobody's realistically going to arrange for globally-unique multicast space allocations and convince every AS in the world to start peering multicast over BGP for general public use.
zxcmx 6y ago
Apart from it not really being in anyone's financial interest - not content providers, copyright holders or advertisers, it would be viewed as a security risk if anyone could easily do that - e.g: https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/4/4/18294951/australia-live-streaming-law-facebook-twitter-periscope https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/4/4/18294951/austral... The idea of using multicast in this way also ignores some of the actual good features of HLS, in particular the ability to adapt content to a specific user's device and Internet connection.

by jewel 6y ago

it's a shame multicast isn't universally supported on the Internet. It'd make it possible to broadcast a live video to millions or billions of people straight from a cell phone.

londons_explore 6y ago

There are a few countries where multicast is usable. It worked on 80+% of UK internet connections in circa 2008.

ForHackernews 6y ago

That was my first thought. What's needed to enable multicast? Work by ISPs?

_jjkk 6y ago
There is no obvious benefit to the ISP to serve multicast packets (so some kind of regulation would need to be crafted to force them to do so) In a world where denial of service attacks are cheap and ubiquitous, my first thought is that enabling multicast would be difficult to do without reducing the cost of debilitating DOS attacks.
- Olipro 6y ago
  Well, there is. Say I'm an ISP with X million subscribers. Given a peering with Y GBit of throughput to someone like say, Twitch or Facebook; with multicast, I now only end up with a single load of data for each livestream coming over the pipe. However, this does require direct peerings. Multicast over the Internet is just not a thing. This could technically be built out with IPv6, but nobody's realistically going to arrange for globally-unique multicast space allocations and convince every AS in the world to start peering multicast over BGP for general public use.

zxcmx 6y ago

Apart from it not really being in anyone's financial interest - not content providers, copyright holders or advertisers, it would be viewed as a security risk if anyone could easily do that - e.g: https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/4/4/18294951/australia-live-streaming-law-facebook-twitter-periscope https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/4/4/18294951/austral... The idea of using multicast in this way also ignores some of the actual good features of HLS, in particular the ability to adapt content to a specific user's device and Internet connection.