Re: How do you put a TV station on the Mbone?

[Joel Jaeggli <joelja () bogus com>]

On 4/29/11 10:12 AM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Ryan Malayter" <malayter () gmail com>
>
> > On Apr 28, 11:14 pm, Jay Ashworth <j... () baylink com> wrote:
> > > > (cough)multicast(cough)
> > >
> > > But... but... how do we count the viewers, then?
> >
> > Isn't the real problem with global multicast: "How do we ultimately
> > bill the broadcaster for all that traffic amplification that happened
> > *inside* every other AS?" It seems like you'd have to do per-packet
> > accounting at every router, and coordinate billing/reporting amongst
> > all providers that saw those packets.
>
> See, now, I expected to hear that objection.
>
> Internet engineers are prone to try to solve this problem in favor of
> the viewer, and their networks -- with their networks winning in case
> of a push.
>
> *Program providers*, OTOH, have a completely different set of "optimal"
> parameters -- many of which are directly at odds with that approach, and
> most of which are completely ignored by Internet engineering types when 
> working on this stuff.
>
> And OTGH, even if, say, a local TV station wanted to let people do this
> sort of thing, *the people they get their programs from* -- both at the
> Network and the "provider to Network" level -- will expect to have their
> own say in the matter.
>
> *Certainly* there should be a Multicast Cloud, and an easy way for 
> program providers to dump things into it.  But, as you say, who's going
> to pay for it is an issue, and how one enforces that is another even
> more contentious one.
>
> Layer 9 is a *bitch*, isn't it?
>
> So: if I *wanted* to put my video in the multicast cloud... how would 
> I do it?  I do, after all, now work for a TV network which sells things;
> this is not an idle question for me: the more people who can see me,
> the better. 


It turns out that as a content provider you can unicast video delivery
without coordinating the admission of your content onto every edge
eyeball network on the planet. It's cheap enough that it makes money on
fairly straght-forward internet business models and it apparently scales
to meet the needs of justin beiber fans.