RARE user and assistance email list

[Tim Chown <>]

> On 8 Feb 2021, at 14:12, mc36 <> wrote:
> 
> hi,
> 
> On 2/8/21 2:10 PM, Simon Leinen wrote:
>> This GÉANT/EUMETSAT collaboration famously uses multicast:
>> https://impact.geant.org/portfolio/eumetsat/
>> This type of use cases should be supported by BIER, provided we can
>> bring this to the end sites. 
> surely we can! we have software based forwarder for bier with eactly
> the same capabilites the tofino have: bier label replication, imposition
> and decapsulation, and evpn/vpls flood reduction in software mode.
> these software forwarders link with dpdk or libpcap so runs on anything,
> and uses the same api from freertr, also so the user experience is the
> same, regardless if the forwarding is done in asic, dpdk or pcap.
> 
>> As for the backbone, it could be a nice
>> application for a RARE/Tofino-based overlay - we could remove the burden
>> of multicast routing from the backbone routers if that's desired.
> agree, this "stateless" multicast is a very fancy thing to have!
> assuming a geant sized network, just one source per site can result
> in a huge mesh tree if it would be done by mldp, p2mp-te or pim,
> probably this is why basically we don't see real-world multicast
> applications…

Yes, that’s a big driver for bier.  The challenge is content.  I remember 
watching NASA on multicast (bone) at uni well over 20 years ago.  Much of the 
current use of multicast seems to be local (like Bonjour in a lan, or control 
protocols over a site), last mile, or on private networks (Stig says Cisco 
multicast is used by private financial ticker-tape type applications).

Much of the original case for multicast seems to have been assimilated by CDN 
infrastructure, though that may not be great for live TV.  There must be a 
LOT more football streaming now fans can’t be at grounds, via various 
services like iFollow in the UK.  How is that done?

Tim