On Feb 12, 2013, at 01:06 , Doug Barton <do...@dougbarton.us> wrote: > On 02/11/2013 03:52 PM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
>> One of us has a different dictionary than everyone else. > > I'm not sure it's different dictionaries, I think you're talking past each > other. No, it's definitely different dictionaries. I am purposely staying out of the whole multicast vs. CDN vs. set-top caching vs. $RANDOM_TECHNOLOGY thing. I was concentrating sole on one point - that the long tail "is _by definition_ a tiny fraction of total demand" (Stephen's emphasis). The long tail might be a fraction, or it might be a majority of the traffic. Depends on the use case. Important to remember this discussing the pros & cons of each protocol / approach. As for the rest, time will tell. But it's fun to watch the discussion, especially by people who have never attempted any of what they are espousing. :) Hey, sometimes that's where the best ideas come up - people who don't know what is impossible are not constrained! -- TTFN, patrick > Video on demand and broadcast are 2 totally different animals. For VOD, > multicast is not a good fit, clearly. But for broadcast, it has a lot of > potential. Most of the issues with people wanting to pause, rewind, etc. are > already handled by modern DVRs, even with live programming. > > What I haven't seen yet in this discussion (and sorry if I've missed it) is > the fact that every evening every broadcast network sends out hour after hour > of what are essentially "live" broadcasts, in the sense that they were not > available "on demand" before they were aired "on TV" that night. In addition > to live broadcasts, this nightly programming is ideal for multicast, > especially since nowadays most of that programming is viewed off the DVR at > another time anyway. So filling up that DVR (or even watching it live) could > happen over multicast just as well as it could happen over unicast. > > But more importantly, what's missing from this conversation is that the > broadcast networks, the existing cable/satellite/etc. providers, and everyone > else who has a multi-billion dollar vested interest in the way that the > business is structured now would fight this tooth and nail. So we can > engineer all the awesome solutions we want, they are overwhelmingly unlikely > to actually happen. > > Doug > >
