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RE: Use of SAP in a PIM SSM Network
Marshall,
You make some good points about future devices coming into the picture that
will not necessarily access the current webpages on the Internet, most
likely because they are too rich to be displayed on initial versions of
wireless devices. However, for the Internet, where I believe SSM has a
future, I still believe that it makes most sense to access SSM content the
same as any other content, via clicking on a link on a web page. This
requires no changes to current practices of content providers, other than
deploying SSM (which is a large hurdle, and that is the point, this is large
enough of a hurdle that changing anything else and putting even more hurdles
in the way of acceptance will make deployment of SSM all that much slower
than it already is likely to be.)
I do think that there will be as you say a whole new generation of devices
as you point out that will need another way to access content other than
going to a standard Internet webpage which is too rich, and one possible way
to do this is some kind of push of a session directory to the device and
then the end user clicks on the links that they want to access. Hmmm, this
is beginning to sound just like the AOL service where all users have a
common AOL homepage to start there searches from, but in this case the
homepage would be specially desgined for display on the devices and would
show what categories of content is available, and then the user clicks on
the link to get to a particular category, and the a scollable list of
available content within the category is shown which can be clicked on. The
difference is that the webpages may be specially designed to be small so
that it can be viewed reasonable in a wireless device, for example.
I guess I'm not really seeing the difference between a scrollable list of
content by genre (= lists of links on different webpages, one for each
genre), whether it be for cable T.V. or for the 3G wireless device. Aren't
all of these just different forms of webpages that show what content is
available, and it is just that some are more primitive, more succinct, or
more compact than others? Isn't the directory service available on cable
T.V. over time slowly evolving into something more like a webpage? Of
course, it is fine if the webpage itself is sent out over an SSM group,
nothing stops that from happening, just like any other piece of content may
be delivered more efficiently using SSM if there is a lot of concurrent
access to the content, like the homepage for the device and perhaps in your
example all of the webpages for each genre that lists all of the content
available within each genre (which may all be available using SSM).
Mike
-----Original Message-----
From: Marshall Eubanks [mailto:tme@21rst-century.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2000 7:09 AM
To: luby@digitalfountain.com
Cc: zaid; Toerless Eckert; Ross Finlayson; Al Adler; HANSEN CHAN;
ssm-interest@external.cisco.com
Subject: Re: Use of SAP in a PIM SSM Network
Dear Mike;
Toerless presented an argument that session announcements wouldn't
scale. I presented a counter argument, a scheme which does scale, which
no-one has
refuted.
Michael Luby wrote:
> How does what help the end user? Having web pages? It is clear that this
> is the way everybody uses web pages today, so are you asking how does the
> Internet help end users? I really don't understand this question...
>
> I'm wondering about the preferences of end users. What makes anyone
believe
> that they will want yet another service? What rationale is there that end
> user will want anything else other than what they have today on the
> Internet, i.e., to to a web page, see a list of content and streams
offered
> by that provider, and click on the link that corresponds to the service
that
> they want. Is anyone seriously suggesting that we need yet another form
of
> a browser (that would be fine, but it will take a long time for any
> substantial set of users to accept it, and in the meantime it behooves the
> deployment of SSM to use standard web pages for quick deployment). What
is
> the rationale and business decision behind offering SSM through a
different
> interface other than a standard browser?
I think what you are forgetting is that in the near future people will not
necessarily
access the internet (and particularly internet broadcasts) through a box
with a web server. I doubt that
people with a handheld 3G wireless IP "SSM-Man" audio player on the beach
are going to want to
to look at web sites to select content. A scrollable list of content by
genre (such as what the
Kerbango box has, but via multicast) would make more sense.
As for Internet TV : I have cable television at home. It broadcasts a
rotating schedule of
what's on the air on channels 1 and 2 - a session announcement, of a sort. I
use it all the time.
So do lots of other people, including many who have never used any sort of
browser.
SSM session announcements will have similar utility, and I have no doubt
that they will be used.
Marshall
> What is wrong with the way users
> select different services from any provider from a webpage? As I said
> before, it may make perfect sense for someone to put up a webpage that
> offers content for a variety of types of content and streams from a
variety
> of content providers, and this may be even targeted to just SSM streaming
> content. But, what is special about SSM from the user perspective that
> makes it compelling enough to offer yet another way to access this content
> (which will take a long time to accept)?. If you really want SSM to catch
> on as an Internet (with a capital I) service, it seems the best way to do
> this is to change as little as possible from the end use experience when
> this is rolled out, which means you provide access to such content using
the
> standard approach, through web pages.
>
> One of the problems with the standard model of multicast is that it was
too
> complex to deploy and operate by most ISPs, and too fragile. Each extra
> component on top of what is already offered in the Internet makes it more
> fragile and less acceptable. Whatever can be done to minimize the changes
> that need to be made to roll out SSM, either in the underlying
> infrastructure or in the end user experience, will greatly increase the
> chances that it becomes widely used.
>
> Again, my two cents ... flame out ... and let others put there two cents
in.
>
> Mike Luby
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: zaid [mailto:zalbanna@mci.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2000 10:01 PM
> To: Mike Luby; tme@21rst-century.com; Toerless Eckert; Ross Finlayson;
> Al Adler
> Cc: HANSEN CHAN; ssm-interest@external.cisco.com
> Subject: Re: Use of SAP in a PIM SSM Network
>
> How does this help the end user ? It seems that having a mechanism
> similar
> in functionality to SAP would be preferred by users. Using the direct
> TV model,
> a user may not want to access the provider's channel to view the list
> of streams
> available from that provider. By having a directory service, users
> will have one
> place to access to choose any content from any provider. Scalability
> will be one
> of the issues to resolve, ultimately the flexibility of this model
> will likely make
> it more desirable and usable.
>
> Thanks,
> Zaid
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Luby <luby@digitalfountain.com>
> To: tme@21rst-century.com <tme@21rst-century.com>; Toerless Eckert
> <eckert@cisco.com>; Ross Finlayson <finlayson@live.com>; Al Adler
> <al@on-the-i.com>
> Cc: HANSEN CHAN <hansen.chan@alcatel.com>;
> ssm-interest@external.cisco.com <ssm-interest@external.cisco.com>
> Date: Tuesday, November 14, 2000 11:36 PM
> Subject: RE: Use of SAP in a PIM SSM Network
>
> I think there are different kinds of services that can be offered, and
> that
> is the difference in the discussion below. I happen to agree with
> Toerless
> that webpage access is the more natural way that SSM groups will be
> accessed. Today, there are many many more than 50,000 pieces of
> content and
> streams available on the web from different content providers, and
> there is
> absolutely no attempt to make available a centralized listing of all
> those
> piece of content in one place on one webpage: each content provider
> makes
> their content available on their webpages through hyperlinks, and the
> organization and presentation of that content is designed by them
> according
> to their needs. For example, Yahoo has many many pieces of content
> and
> streams available on its extensive website, and each one is accessed
> by the
> click of a hyperlink on a given webpage. There is absolutely no
> attempt to
> have a global organization of all the content and streams available on
> the
> Internet. Thus, I'm wondering what is so special about SSM, and why
> it
> won't roll into the same access model as all other content and streams
> out
> there? I suspect that if something different is attempted to organize
> SSM
> content and streams that was different than the rest of the Internet,
> then
> it will have a very limited use on the general Internet. This is the
> beauty
> of SSM: it really fits into current practices for making content and
> streams
> available on the Internet. Each content provider can independently
> source
> their own SSM streams just like they put content up on their webpages
> today
> available through http servers, and they don't have to worry about the
> old
> style of having a global listing service of all multicast groups in
> the
> world (which I suspect was there more because of the problems with
> having
> multicast group address clashes, which is not a problem for SSM), they
> just
> list their SSM content and streams as they are today on their
> webpages. The
> advantage of course is the massive scalability that SSM offers (of
> course,
> this is assuming it is deployed across the Internet as we all hope).
> The
> advantage of listing SSM content and streams on webpages is that it is
> what
> is done today for other content and this way nobody has to change
> their
> current practices. Of course, this is not to say that a global
> listing
> service would not be useful, but I'm not sure I see why this is
> anymore
> useful than a service that is a global listing service for all content
> and
> streams on the Internet, i.e., what is special about SSM streams
> versus
> other streams other than the massive scalability of SSM?
>
> My two cents,
> Mike
>
T.M. Eubanks
Multicast Technologies, Inc
10301 Democracy Lane, Suite 410
Fairfax, Virginia 22030
Phone : 703-293-9624
Fax : 703-293-9609
e-mail : tme@on-the-i.com tme@multicasttech.com
http://www.on-the-i.com http://www.buzzwaves.com