Re: New Internet Draft on automatic (end-user) tunneling for SSM

[Leonard Giuliano <lenny@juniper.net>]

*>         
*>" (I'm hoping that this will help break the logjam that has held back
*>the widespread adoption of multicast...) "
*>         
*>I hope you are right. We (This community) also have to consider the
*>high probability that as a result of this draft no (ISP) will deploy
*>multicast natively . Another sad and high probability is that ISPs
*>start blocking that kind of traffic and start charging for it under
*>the flag of multicast services.
*>         

That may be an initial reaction, but I think a good argument could be made
that this sort of tunneling would finally provide an ISP a good incentive
to deploy multicast natively.  If such a thing existed, multicast enabled
ISPs could finally attract content providers by saying that they could
multicast on their network and expect it to actually reach people.  It
would benefit the multicast enabled networks by eliminating duplicated
unicast traffic across their backbone at a cost of tunnels at the edge
(would be interesting to see what this cost will be).  Non-enabled
networks would see that traffic is being tunneled and duplicated over
their network, and have a strong incentive to deploy natively.  Content
providers would be able to multicast content and expect someone to
actually get it, and thereby create more content.

A cool idea as long as the cost of these tunnels is reasonable.