Greetings Friends,
I’m reading Routing TCP/IP Volume II (Chapter 5 “Introduction to IP Multicast Routing”, page 399) and I’ve come across a paragraph regarding that customers have been pushing for ISPs to be able to over multicasting services across the internet in support of customer applications. I understand this is probably a difficult idea to pull off seeing how when one ISPs multicast traffic many not be prioritized (honored) by another ISP in peering. The book describes the idea of the MBone within an ISP. I worked for a ISP for a little while and I believe the MBone was present but may only have existed to support television services, not customer applications.
My question is….does anyone have any basic information on MBone implementations? Do they really exist? Do ISPs really strive to provide multicasting services via MBone or is this just a theory that will never go into practice? If MBone’s do exist, how are they implemented (seperate devices or inline service with priority with regular, unicasting routers)?
Thanks,
Mike