On 17/12/2008, at 12:24 AM, Nathan Ward wrote:
I think there's also a perception that multicast is a solution to a diminishing problem. Most of the major broadcasters seem to be acknowledging that the end of appointment TV (and radio) is nigh [1]. If live content is ~40% of your volume and dropping, and you still need some kind of non-multicast infrastructure to deal with the on demand (individually time shifted) content you're dishing up, then why bother with the effort of setting up multiple platforms?
Yeah, valid point. I'm not entirely sure that broadcast content will disappear entirely though.
People still seem to actively seek out "appointment media" even when alternatives are available (for example listening to live radio stations online when they could download music from any number of legit and non-legit sources). I don't doubt live content as a proportion of total volume is dropping, but I don't think it'll disappear entirely any time soon, and I'd even go so far as to say the volume won't be insignificant for a while yet.
What about distributing Linux ISOs?
Well, the sender would have to send at the speed of the slowest likely receiver, and who wants to wait half an hour for the next Gentoo ISO broadcast to roll around? ;) I guess you could have several differently-paced streams, but it strikes me that the problem of distributing Linux ISOs has been quite adequately solved already... -- Jasper Bryant-Greene Network Engineer, Unleash ddi: +64 3 978 1222 mob: +64 21 129 9458