Re: [MBONED] deprecating MSDP

["Manfredi, Albert E" <[e-mail]>]

-----Original Message-----
From: MBONED [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Leonard Giuliano

> Tweaking RFC4610 to match the microscopic (and generally irrelevant)
> benefits MSDP might have will just create yet another overly complex
> mcast protocol to address the corner cases of a handful of ill-conceived
> network deployments.  And have the same result- no one deploys it bc of
> all this unnecessary complexity.

+1.

There should be, and apparently there is, no need for a special-purpose, multicast-only, source discovery mechanism.

I'm not as hard over as many others seem to be, on "SSM only." Because as multicast is actually implemented, usefully implemented, it is in individual networks, such as enterprise networks or internal platform networks, in which ASM is often the best choice. For instance, when one needs redundancy of sources.

I should also point out that multicast is seen, by the security establishment, as a potential security threat. Therefore, inter-domain multicast is not encouraged. Quite the contrary, it is blocked be default. I'm also informed, second hand I'll admit, that ISPs and CDNs do not much favor multicast, for their own technical and economic reasons. I suppose one reason might be the proliferation of streaming media protocols these days, specific to different devices, which defeats the purpose of multicast.

Maybe multicast will remain a niche solution, very useful where it's required, but also deliberately limited in scope. Which is okay, in my book.

Bert