purpose scope of sm-interest list

[Jon Crowcroft <J.Crowcroft@cs.ucl.ac.uk>]

the purpose for setting up this list was to discuss some of the ideas
in simple multicast and express and other recent work in multicast
addressing and routing and implied address and group (and core/rp)
management

(see
ftp://cs.ucl.ac.uk/darpa/simple-multicast.ps.gz
i'll try to find express pointers later)

the scope of discussion is intended (at least by me)
to be set by this but the approach I would like
to promote to thinking about how we might go forward with changes to
the Internet standard multicast model (deering)
is an evolutionary rather than revolutionary one

in particular, we do NOT want to promote anything that in any way
slows down or brings into doubt the value of deploying multicast, AS
IT IS NOW. For example, the replacement as far as possible of DVMRP
with PIM, is a Good Thing....etc etc

But, there are problems (and we will issue a note trying to outline
these) with the current multicast architecture - some of these are the
complexity of the routing and address management systems (c.f. the
slippery slope once one has PIM, or also having
to have BGMP, MSDP and the RP and address mangement plethora of
protocols etc etc)....some of the problems are associated with the
anonymity model of IP multicast - and some simpel things that have
been expressed in the SM and EXPRESS work might be appled in the PIM
world quite easily (and are in some cases!)...

we'd like to CONSIDER the effect of IPv6 address space on how one
might eveolve multicast - to date, few router vendors have committed
anything in the area of v6 multicast routing, so the field is
wide open to (sensible) staged evolution - the tuple addressing in SM
and EXPRESS can be fitted into the v6 API for example if one assumes
that core/rp or channel addresses are still v4.....but does one want
to

and of course, if one does, how does one interwork with the existing
multicast base....

jon