I heard lots of questions on multicast today...here's how it works with
RealMedia. If you have decent MBONE connectivity, you'll negotiate
multicast when you connect to the audio or video stream. If you don't, the
client falls back to unicast UDP mode. If even that fails (say you're
behind a firewall), it rolls to TCP mode, and will ultimately resort to HTTP
"cloaking" if nothing else works. Users can override the automated
fall-back through the preferences dialog if there's a strong preference for
a particular mode.
Odd. If MBone native tools aren't going to be offered, can
you please make sure source code is available for the player?
I normally use vat/sdr/rat on Digital Unix for watching NANOG,
and it seems RealNetworks, Inc. haven't figured out how to
compile their source on that platform yet. 
Have we sunk to proprietary, closed protocols for NANOG? 'Tis
a sad, sad day.
Jeffrey Payne, GM Broadcast Operations
RealNetworks, Inc.
As a representative of RealNetworks, do you have any comments
on the availability of source code to your player, for those
of us with multicast-supported systems you have chosen to
ignore? Or is it simply time to declare NANOG yet another
bastion of closed minds, and closed protocols?
Matt Petach
disgruntled NANOG non-viewer
I was really looking forward to tuning into today's proceedings via my
Real Player. Unfortunately this didn't happen for various reasons. Even
though the MBONE was buggy at times, I could still manage to hear the
speakers that I was interested in. I feel that we need to give Real
networks a chance, after all they do have some "running code" and the
shear number of players out there could be considered some form of "rough
consensus",(yes and I know NANOG is not the IETF 
but what worries me
is that with the MBONE, I or some of my collegues can "lend a hand " if
the stuff isn't working, knowledgable people can rip into the code and
maybe come up with a temporary fix or at least learn enough that the "next
time" will be better. Perhapse Progressive Networks will take the not too
subtle hint that today's performance provides and realize that they can't
go it alone if they really want to scale to the size that I think they
want to. There are folks out here that can help and are willing to help
but maybe first PN needs to come down of their high horse and get somewhat
of a clue.
geoffw
Virtual Sites
Matthew Petach wrote:
> Jeffrey Payne, GM Broadcast Operations
> RealNetworks, Inc.
As a representative of RealNetworks, do you have any comments
on the availability of source code to your player, for those
of us with multicast-supported systems you have chosen to
ignore? Or is it simply time to declare NANOG yet another
bastion of closed minds, and closed protocols?
I would be happy if there was actual support for non-Intel/non-MMXprocessors,
aside from Macintosh.
As it is, everything since their version 3 release has been "Error 88" in our
office
since they won't support these so-called 'orphan' CPUs.