[LINK] ISP Peering / Tech List?

[Adam Todd]

At 12:08 PM 7/09/2006, George Bray wrote:
>Is there a mailing list where aussie ISPs congregate these days?

As far back as 1991 the ISP's haven't been able to team up together and do 
anything.  I doubt, based on my limited current knowledge, there are in 
fact many ISPs left.

Certainly none like they use to and most are reselling someone else's DSL 
or port products anyway.

>I'd like to ask some general questions about how peering multicast
>services might work.

Won't work.  Can already tell you.

Consumers who have DSL services with capped bandwidth limits aren't going 
to be happy when their limit is reached in the first 20 minutes of their 
billing cycle because of multi-cast data.

This issue has already been a major factor in streams of complaints when 
ISPs with DSL delivery services broadcast ARP and other Network Broadcast 
traffic that has nothing to do with the remote user/network.

When you have a 200 MB cap a month, the last thing you want is the other 
200 networks broadcast data on your interface.


>I'm trying to guage the feasability of using multicast to deliver
>services via Australia's ISPs, so I need to understand whether they're
>technically equipped to do so and what the political scene is between
>peers. What barriers exist for delivering multicast network services
>to a) a users' ISP and b) the end user.

Most ISPs now only resell some other providers DSL product.  As the 
requirement would be to turn on broadcasting for all ports, (no one is 
going to sit down and maintain a list of who gets what on what port, trust 
me on that) and whilst cap traffic limits remain in place, it isn't going 
to happen.

Consumers will scream.

Then again, the entire process might well remove the traffic charging 
regime that is now long past it's useby date and focus on the fundamental 
of network infrastructure and delivery rather than counting bytes and 
taxing users.

But do you want consumers to experience 33k6 network speeds for 28 days of 
the month?  Or in the case of Telstra Big Pond, be charged $3000 a month 
for traffic they didn't even see!

If this were to happen, people will turn their "always on" DSL boxes ALWAYS 
OFF and only TURN them ON when they need to.

>Would it be fair to say that most end users have multicast filtered
>either by their ISP or their ADSL/Router/Gateway?

Nope.  I don't.  And I know I can send and receive it with a little push 
and pull.  But who in reality want's my multicast security video stream and 
my multicast edit suite steams anyway?