The problem of multicasting

Bob Cringely has an interesting article about a new service called NeoKast which purports to make internet video broadcasting possible without requiring multicast support at the router or substantial amounts of bandwidth. I’m sure the technology is patented, which is unfortuanate as it would be nice to see some open versions of this software. As far as I can tell the NeoKast service is essentially emulating a multicast network by using peer hosts to spread the feed, in real time, to other viewers in a peer to peer manner. It’s an interesting idea but perhaps its time has already come and gone. While there are some live events that attract enough viewer interest where considerable amounts of bandwidth might be saved, for the most part it seems that the future of Internet video is on demand video which is a horse of a different color and which does not benefit from this method at all, at least in its current incarnation.

1 Comments.

  1. “Unfortunately” our technology is patented, but we are planning to release a free and open service for everyone to use.

    You also got it right with the importance of OnDemand content. We are actively working in this direction and planning to introduce a first version during our beta testing phase.

    Hope you have signed up for a beta user account on our site so that you can get a first hand impression of what our archiving/OnDemand service is going to look like.

    Also, let us know if you have any more questions or comments.

    Regards,

    Stefan
    Chief Software Architect
    Neokast