Subject: Redirecting some discussions

From: Stephen Casner <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 14:19:56 -0800 ()

This message is a followup to the recent discussions of "whither the
MBone", and is prompted by the spate of messages from people trying to
escape the mailing list because of the increased traffic.  I think
this discussion is important and useful, but it is somewhat outside
the scope of the main purpose of the mbone list, namely mbone
operational issues.

My only concern about the discussion is that parts of it had a
confrontational tone between ISPs and users of multicast.  To me, that
seems obviously counter-productive because the whole collection of
parties must work together to get where we want to go.  There are
really two parts to the discussion:

  - technical issues in moving from where the MBone is now to
    widespread deployment of IP multicast service in the Internet,
    e.g., solving some of the problems seen by the ISP's.  This is
    exactly the goal of the MBone Deployment WG, so the
    [email-masked] list is the right place for that part of the
    discussion.  In particular, I'd like to see a discussion of what
    steps we can take in the short term, such as having ISP's filter
    the multicast routes they accept from customers to avoid
    accidental MBone routing table explosions.

  - business issues, including the business case for ISPs and for
    content providers and how to develop both in parallel (both will
    take some time).  The IP Multicast Initiative was formed to
    promote discussion of these issues and to provide a forum for the
    necessary coordination among all the parties involved.  To that
    end, the IPMI is hosting a mailing list open to all.  I encourage
    all of you interested in this discussion to join the
    [email-masked] list and continue the discussion there.

To join the mboned list, send a message to

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with the following body:

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Thanks!
							-- Steve