[ILUG] Free software for .pando files?

[Thomas Bridge]

On 07/09/2007, paul at clubi.ie <paul at clubi.ie> wrote:

> On Fri, 7 Sep 2007, Thomas Bridge wrote:

> > Thats a fairly short sighted view - there are significant
> > enhancements being made to Multicast (eg IGMP v 3) that will are
> > designed explicitly with the cable TV market in mind.  I understand
> > there are already a number of set top boxes running IP multicast in
> > various television markets.

> Sure, multicast is in use in some very controlled environments.

> That's called a niche.

I thought we were discussing cable providers delivering content to
their customers.

> We've been hearing about multicast for at least a *decade* now. The
> BBC has been trying for *years* to get multicast routing to end-users
> for TV streams. I'm not sure if they have it to any ISPs even today.
> Even if they do, vast majority of broadband routers *don't do
> multicast* (on the 'WAN' side).

They have about 12 or 13 currently as I understand it.

In any case, this is a different issue from the one I was thinking about.

> In the meantime, P2P has gone from nothing to being the prime mover
> of audio-visual content, inc near-realtime (IT crowd last friday was
> on P2P within hours, I had it downloaded in less than half an hour).

This is inherently the nature of P2P as it was five years ago.    The
only thing that has changed in that you can download the file faster -
partly due to the fact there are more users and partly because of the
fact broadband connections are faster.

> There's just no way to describe multicast as anything other than a
> failure, at least as a general, inter-domain mover of bits.

Oh I agree.   But that wasn't the scenario I was addressing.

> Yes, that's my point.

> That's traffic that /didn't/ end up clogging the exchange<->BAS
> backhaul.

I think the local sort of filesharing you're discussing requires two things:

1.   Files that are of interest to more than 2 people within the local
exchange community.
2.   Communication within that community to make the availability of
the files known.

Both of those are more practical in the environments you discussed
(work and college) than in a local neighbourhood.    And the reality
is if I want to download the IT crowd, I'm going to to the existing
P2P networks to get it and not wait for my mate to stick it on his
shared drive.

Thomas

-- 
Thomas Bridge
CCIE  #14108