Re: Multicast Traffic on Backbones

[Masataka Ohta <mohta () necom830 hpcl titech ac jp>]

Michael;

> > > > an option with customers.  There isn't a demand, so the providers don't
> > > > put the resources into it...
>
>       That is the way our economy works...

The economy around best effort multicast is as follows

        ISPs want to get more money for additional service of multicast

        receivers pay nothing to receive the same service as unicast
        with the additional complexity

        senders are forced to support unicast service to attract
        enough number of receivers, even if they pay more for faster
        connection

The story may be different for closed groups of senders and receivers
but they are negligible.

And, if receivers start using resource reserved communication at their
own expense, they are motivated to use multicast to reduce communication
cost. But, it will take time. Note that BGP is incapable of handling
such situation.

                                                        Masataka Ohta