Re: multicast-transition

["Tony Ballardie" <ballardie@dial.pipex.com>]

Dirk,

 > Wouldn't it be good to investigate how
> senders and/or receivers can hook up automatically to the MBone (without
> the requirement of somebody in the MBone configuring a tunnel to your
> network).

I gave a short talk at mboned and ssm in San Diego about
auto-tunnelling. It's a definite must, and real soon, if inter-domain
IP multicast isn't going to completely wither. Although my proposal 
was only strawman-like, the concept at least was almost unanimously 
acknowledged as being needed. I proposed extending IGMP to 
additionally have receivers issue a special join to an anycast address
which would create a tunnel between the receiver and closest multicast
router.

Whatever the mechanism, it has to be simple and not involve
*any* 3rd party config, or ideally - user config. Of course, this
implies host mods, but IGMP is evolving anyway, so it would
be a good time (and chance) to integrate this. 

I think this capability is urgent for receivers, but less so for
senders. "Broadcasters" should be - and probably are - prepared
to go to greater lengths to ensure their content gets out there.

I plan to write a draft but haven't had time yet, and I had a
couple of offers to co-author, which might mean it gets done
a bit quicker :-)

cheers

Tony