Re: Use of SAP in a PIM SSM Network

[Marshall Eubanks <tme@21rst-century.com>]

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

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