Subject: mbone is stillborn, news at 11

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2002 13:39:13 -0400

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  For the fourth time in 7 years, I've been unable to attend an IETF in
person. For many years now I've been trying to establish a tunnel with anyone.

  I have plenty of IPv4, IPv6, IPsec and my team has regular conference calls
using unicast'ed H.323 over IPsec. I have DVMRP installed stock on every
system I own, and PIM available by typing "make".

  Yet, in those 7 years, I've never seen a multicast packet except while *AT*
IETF. Not for lack of trying and lack of throwing money at the problem. 

  Yes, some ISPs who have native multicast. Even the ones who have "Canadian
divisions" do not bother to extend it to Canada. None of them are willing to
tunnel anything anymore.

  While in attendance at IETFs, in multicast enabled sessions, I've never
heard a single comment from the mbone.

  According to:
    http://videolab.uoregon.edu/events/ietf/ietf54.html

  it might be available in unicast MPEG-4 format, if I happen to have a PC
runnings windows and agree to run some beta of realone.

  I'm not sure that this is accurate myself, since there are no unicast
addresses provided in the list. If this is accurate, and I will be able to
provide *comments* in real time, then I'll go rent whatever I need to make
this work. 

  I'm sure that I'm not the only one in this situation. My general feeling is
that multicast got killed by going into production prematurely.

  I'm willing to establish DVMRP and PIM tunnels to anyone who wants.

  Do I have any feed of info? No. But maybe we can rebuild something useful.

]       ON HUMILITY: to err is human. To moo, bovine.           |  firewalls  [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON    |net architect[
] [email-masked] http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/ |device driver[
] panic("Just another NetBSD/notebook using, kernel hacking, security guy");  [