Subject: research using mbone for auctioning

From: "Nieaf-Smitt B.V." <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Oct 1997 13:56:08 +0100

This half year I'm a trainee at Nieaf Smitt BV
Nieaf Smitt is the leader in Europe in Auction Systems.
The are operating in auctions for vegetables, flowers and fish.

My assignment is to research if there is a possability to auction over
the internet. I already concluded that internet is not Real Time. And
because working packed switched not an option. 

Somebody introduced me with Mbone. I already have searched the internet
for more information. But there are still a few questions that remain.

Is Mbone really real-time?
Is Mbone already in operation?
Is a connection by users from 2/3 hours possible without any troubles?
Goes Mbone often down ?
If the conection is under broken. Is there a response to the user. What
happens to the transmitted files ?
What cost a mbone licence for lets say 3 hours daily ?

If You could help me or have any guestions please mail me!!
I'd like to hear from you.

Jeroen Jonkman
[email-masked]

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From: Jon Crowcroft <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Oct 1997 15:50:10 +0100

>Is Mbone really real-time?

some of the time

 >Is Mbone already in operation?

yes, some of the place

 >Is a connection by users from 2/3 hours possible without any troubles?

some of the users

 >Goes Mbone often down ?

some days, 

 >happens to the transmitted files ?

someone else may answer this

 >What cost a mbone licence for lets say 3 hours daily ?

something for nothing

but more seriously, I think you should look at UUNET's commercial
multicast service that was just announced....

UUNET are proably one of the bigger ISPs and are owned by one of the
bigger fiber owners (MFS) who are owned by someone who wants ot be the
wolrds biggest (internet) telephone company (worldcom.....

they recently announced a thing i think they call UUCAST

the "mbone" per se, is mostly pilot service which has highly variable
performance,. with some parts operational, and well supported (e.g.
UK) and other parts on a best effort/goodwill basis......it can work
for days/weeks well, and then die

in terms of applications such as transmistting files, there are not
too many apps yet, but you might look at lucent technologies rmtp
protocol which they use for distributing network charging
data....there are others (globalcast) and there is an internet
research group dedicated to their study, and
furtherence.....(rm-reliable multicast - see 
http://irtf.cs.berkeley.edu/irtf/rm.html

for mbone licence - there is no such thing i ngeneral, although
commercial cast services such as UUNets seem to be the nearest...the
s/w is partly public domain, partly commercial (depends what mix of
services you want)

for a distributed auction, (many-to-many application) I would say that
NO-ONE yet runs a service that would work at all well, and no-one yet
offers applications that would work too well....

two apps that you could try are the whiteboard from LBL (or the newer
media board) and the network text editor from mark handley (see 
http://north.east.isi.edu/
for links)
but they are not the whole shebang

some other things that are part of the tools for doing distributed
auctuioning, _might_ be tools that are used for multimedia conference
control - but there are not a lot of these yet on the internet/mbone

good luck!

 jon