Subject: Re: Was: "interesting" apps needed for MBone? (long)

From: Dave Hayes <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 14:22:13 -0800

Petri Helenius writes:
> Dave Hayes writes:
>  > I'd love to provide lots more content. I'm completely set up to
>  > provide reasonable live music content over the MBONE. However, 
>  > three things stand in my way:
>  > 1) The amazing amount of non-content traffic generated by what people
>  > call "routing bogons". I get these >384K pulses...
> Is this MBone routing traffic or something else? If it's MBone, change
> your multicast routing protocol to something that does not do
> this. 

Quite easier said than done. I have a small cisco which appears
incapable of doing anything without a software upgrade.

> PIM sparse mode is a good choice, our favourite around here,

Since I do not know the differences betweeen what I have now and
what I will have with this, I can't make an informed choice.

Mrouted used to work, but I used to be on FDDI too...;-)

>  > 2) The low sound quality of the most ubiquitous audio tool. AM radio
>  > quality is fine for speech, but music is another matter. Is there
>  > a protocol standard for compressed CD-quality audio yet? 
> There is. RFC2038 for example. There is also a horde of proprietary
> encapsulations doing the same thing in the interim. 

What was what you pointed me at earlier? 

> Most of them are
> shooting for standard-based transport though, but now since they are
> distributing the decodecs for free and servers for $$$$, a standard
> would be counterproductive to their revenues.

Which means that we'll never see interoperability between their
applications, let alone an application that uses the standard.

>  > 3) The lack of a large enough audience to convince "big name" players
>  > that it's worth the time to play here. The MBONE simply does not
>  > command enough "market share" to have any draw to the more popular
>  > artists. 
> This is the classic chicken and egg problem.

Indeed.

> However, the pop radio station transmitting from Finland has been very
> pleased with the listener figures and they decided to go on.
> However, another radio station that played 'older' music cut the net
> feed off since they didn't catch that many people. Maybe that's a
> problem with the net community :-)

There's not enough sample space over the entire MBONE to make any
determinations about audience interest. That's the point. The
percentage of people who can, say, access a WWW site is much greater
than those who can access an MBONE session.
------
Dave Hayes - Altadena CA, USA - [email-masked] 
Freedom Knight of Usenet - http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet

           You can't run with the big dogs if you pee like a puppy.

---

From: Petri Helenius <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 15:00:19 +0200 (EET)

> incapable of doing anything without a software upgrade.

That's why the software is usually stored on FLASH so you can
(depending on your contract) get the software for fee or free.
 > what I will have with this, I can't make an informed choice.
If you are running DVMRP now, changing to PIM-SM will take you from
flood-and-prune to join-based multicast routing.

 > What was what you pointed me at earlier? 

The only current FM-quality radio station on the MBone is using Xing
Technologies MPEG audio layer-2 proprietary codec.
 > applications, let alone an application that uses the standard.
We're already seeing the latter, however it costs $$$ for the client.
I'd guess that if the $$$ is small enough people might go for that.

 > than those who can access an MBONE session.

But we're here to change that, right?

Pete

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From: Dermot Tynan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 18:32:37 +0000 (GMT)

> Technologies MPEG audio layer-2 proprietary codec.

Unless I'm missing something here, MPEG Audio II is not proprietary.
At least not from a decoding point of view.  How they multicast the
audio might be proprietary, but I can't see why they'd shift from
RTP and standard MPEG audio.
						- Der
-- 
Dermot Tynan						+353 91 754608
[email-masked]					 DTN: 822-4608

AltaVista Internet Software, Galway, Ireland

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From: Petri Helenius <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 00:25:12 +0200 (EET)

> RTP and standard MPEG audio.

My point is that the encapsulation is proprietary currently. I cannot
make any promises when it's going to be RTP.
And the other way around, I haven't seen RTP compliant MPEG Audio II
IP multicast application yet.

Pete