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> Speaking as someone who builds networks just for multicast I heard about IP Multicast more than 10 years ago. But it never took off. Or at least I thought so
by dgregd 14y ago
> Speaking as someone who builds networks just for multicast
I heard about IP Multicast more than 10 years ago. But it never took off. Or at least I thought so.
I am really curious what are practical applications of the networks you build. Do your clients use them for broadcasting video streams or something else?
- insaneirish 14y agoNearly all financial market data is disseminated from market venues via multicast. It's the most efficient way to do it. However, you are right about multicast not being generally used. The consequences of this fact are that there is a limited subset of engineers who understand it well and that vendor hardware support for it is often substandard. We constantly have to provide feedback to Cisco, etc. on what sort of features should be in their hardware and what sorts of instrumentation can help operate and troubleshoot multicast networks.
- zb 14y agoIP multicast is used quite extensively for streaming video. Mostly in combined voice/video/data networks for IPTV (think hotel rooms, but also network service providers), as well for stuff like e.g. security cameras. On the public Internet it's still virtually unheard-of afaik, and I expect it to remain that way indefinitely. (I used to work on IP multicast support for network switches.)
- fulafel 14y agoIt used to be pretty popular on the public Internet back when a lot of the use was by academic institutions. I remember seeing some NASA stuff (?) on there before the local university management decided to put up a firewall and break all the interesting IP apps. ref. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone