Manageable multicasting

UUNet Technologies has introduced a transmission technique for streaming audio and video over the Internet that will give high-traffic sites an economical way to deliver multicast services to end users.

The new technology, branded as UUCasting, promises to lower the cost of multicasting by reducing the bandwidth needed to reach large numbers of users and "open the Internet to a whole new group of content providers," said Alan Taffle, vice president of marketing and business development at UUNet.

First generation multicasting technologies require one stream of data for each user. With UUCasting, content providers will send only one stream of audio, video or text data to UUNet, which will then deliver to large numbers of users through 60 Cisco 4700 multicast routers dispersed throughout its network.

"These routers are being used exclusively for multicasting," said Ralph Monfort, manager of network products at UUNet. "They're deployed in our high-speed hubs and will function as an overlay to our existing network."

Currently, UUNet can send information to as many as 250,000 dial-up users simultaneously. That figure will increase to 1 million after the company completes its previously announced network expansion, Monfort said.

UUNet will provide the service in a variety of stream sizes ranging from 5 to 128 kb/s, based on the type of data being broadcast. Low-end streams work well for text-based applications such as ticker information, while audio and video applications will use streams of 25 kb/s and above.

The streamed data will be visible to users connected to UUNet's dial-up infrastructure which will make the service available to about half the dial-up users in the U.S., Monfort said.

The first customers for the service are past UUNet partners, said Joe Bartlett, an analyst at The Yankee Group.

However, whether UUNet can turn these relationships into an avenue for greater acceptance of the technology will be "a more difficult sell," said Bartlett.