Internet Multicast Tomorrow

This article is part of a pair, the first of which looked at the state of play in IP multicast routing (Ole: IPJ Citation?). In this article, we look at the broader problems and future activities with multicast. We divide the areas into routing, addressing, transport, security, operations, and research. There has been quite a bit of debate about the nature of compelling applications for multicast recently[44]. It is certainly the case that we do not completely understand the “market” for multicast this is at least in part because multicast does not yet provide a complete set of functions for all the applications and services we might imagine. This is a typical chicken and egg situation, though: To put an extreme version of the argument, the application writers don’t see any multicast deployed; the ISPs don’t see any multicast applications; the router vendors don’t see any multicast service demand from ISPs.1. As we discussed in the part I of this article, this vicious circle has been broken by streaming applications for audio and video from the classical content providers in the entertainment and news industries. However we are still seeing some teething problems. However, we are also seeing broader interest and development. The next section presents recent work on routing and addressing. After that we look at transport. Subsequently, we discuss security. Then we look at operations and management. Finally, we take a glance at some of the research ideas that are out there.