Subject: Re: the mbone experiment

From: Steve Deering <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 1997 23:16:50 -0700

At 7:00 PM -0700 8/1/97, Mike O'Dell wrote:
>
> 	(1) the current known multicast routing protocols have deeply
> 		pathological scaling behavior for anything approaching
> 		an interesting scale
>
> 	(2) there is no viable business model
>
> so, it doesn't work, and you can't get paid.
>
> Now what was it that is so attractive about it??

Mike,

You sound just like the phone company folks, when they used to dismiss IP.

Steve

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From: "Mike O'Dell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 02 Aug 1997 10:22:52 -0400

Steve,

You sound just like a zealot howling over a gored sacred cow.
(grin - so are we even now?)

The difference between the phoneco's predictions about IP and my
view of multicast technology is the foundation of the opinion.

We have spent 18 months and a couple of million dollars rolling out
a massive multicast infrastructure to learn what it can *really* do and
what you have to do to make it do it.

Notice I specifically identified general "multipoint-to-multipoint"
multicast, not some sweeping generality about IP.

There are very viable products based on multicast technology;
they just aren't what most people seem to have in mind.

And yes, the devil is very much in the details.

By way of reference, the genius of the phone system is that it
is implemented on an immense scale, and it is installed and operated
by people who do not have degrees byond high school. 

Scoff all you wish, but there are parts of the scaling problem they
really do understand, and we do ourselves a favor to steal the valuable
lessons (and ignore the inapplicable parts) and not insist on reinventing
flat tires.

	-mo

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From: "Todd R. Stroup" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 2 Aug 1997 10:41:30 -0400 (EDT)

Just a couple of questions which doesn't mean to be a flame:

	If you are so narrowminded as to say that mbone doesn't work; Why 
are you 1. on this list and 2. why do you use it?

Todd R. Stroup
Fiber Network Solutions, Inc.

On Fri, 1 Aug 1997, Mike O'Dell wrote:

> 
> the current multicast technology and it's most visible experiemental
> implementation (MBone) have several problems when it comes
> to implementing a general multi-point multicast service:
> 
> PS - this does not mean the technology cannot be salvaged for
> some useful purpose, but it's not exactly what people seem
> to have in mind.
> 
> ========================
> Mike O'Dell
> VP, Chief Scientist
> UUNET Technologies, Inc.
> 3060 Williams Drive
> Fairfax, VA 22031
> voice: 703-206-5890
> fax:   703-206-5471
> email: [email-masked]
>

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From: Walid Dabbous <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 02 Aug 1997 16:48:21 +0200

>they just aren't what most people seem to have in mind.

what are to your opinion multicast applications having a 
bussiness model?

Walid Dabbous
http://www.inria.fr/rodeo/personnel/Walid.Dabbous/me.html
INRIA U.R. de Sophia Antipolis      | Email : [email-masked]  
2004, Route des Lucioles BP 93      | Phone : +33 4 93 65 77 18
06902 Sophia Antipolis CEDEX France | Fax   : +33 4 93 65 77 65

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From: "Mike O'Dell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 02 Aug 1997 11:00:47 -0400

Ah yes,  you have come to the nub....

We don't talk about unannounced products

	cheers,
	-mo

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From: "Mike O'Dell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 02 Aug 1997 11:07:46 -0400

Be careful:

I did not say "the mbone doesn't work."

I said it doesn't work as currently constituted 
at anything like an interesting scale.

Those are very different statements.

As for "narrowminded" - i prefer the term "pragmatic"

See, most people do contingency planning for the wrong case - ie,
they worry about failure.  If something fails, it dies and falls
off quicklys and the marketplace has a short memory.

but if you do something that people like a LOT, then you better be
ready to do a lot of it in a big hurry.  and if you can't, you
have a success disaster on your hands, and that is a lot more painful.
just ask AOL (grin)

As to why I'm on the list??

For starters, I'm the Area Director for the MBone Deployement WG in the IETF

	-mo

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From: Jon Crowcroft <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 03 Aug 1997 15:22:25 +0100

>		pathological scaling behavior for anything approaching

so? keep it local to an ISP for now then

 >	(2) there is no viable business model 

um - scuse me - describe why
a reduction of bandwidth requirements over unicast
is not a viable business plan.

if you mean there's no viable business plan for flat rate UDP,
sure.....i agree its trickier....

 >so, it doesn't work, and you can't get paid.
 
you get opaid just for existing in the IP business -if someone else
does it, and you don't , perhaps ceasing to exist could become a
viable business plan...

 >Now what was it that is so attractive about it??

we want it....we'd not do without it unless YOU offer us a _cheaper_
net than we get now.

 >some useful purpose, but it's not exactly what people seem

now, if you want to talk about charging for unicast v. charging for
multicast, let us be careful - there are a number of interesting
problems

personally, the flat rate scheme seems to me to be, itself, endangered
by multicast (for non-realtime traffic) since it should be _cheaper_
especially if it is used for deferred (e.g. mail/bboard/web page)
delivery so as to get near on demand efficieitn web page (e.g. not
just to the user, but between web mirror sites)

second: for realtime, it might just be the way we _can_ afford to
introduce it, without endangering the current bandwith resell
business that most ISPs ovffer over and above telcos, simply because
it gives you leverage....

so i think saying there is no business case needs a bit more detail....

 jon