Good post. Multicast suffers from a lot of drawbacks - Particularly in error + broadcast storm scenarios. I've worked on a few TIBCO based networks and they ar

Good post. Multicast suffers from a lot of drawbacks - Particularly in error + broadcast storm scenarios. I've worked on a few TIBCO based networks and they are difficult to manage (test, verify) even in a constrained setting. I can't imagine it being used in anger in an Internet context. Except perhaps for broadcast video/audio... But as you point out, Akamai style models do this just fine. One model you don't mention (or I've misread some of the types listed) is the Push or Publish-Subscribe Model. I've seen this work really well in corporate environments - the drawbacks being there is a bigger responsibility on intermediate "routers" and it's less than real-time... However, there is a break point at which both of those actually improve (i.e. a value "n" at which maintaining "n" pub-sub is easier than maintaining "n" discrete connections).