Now showing on the Net near you ...
After a dramatic introduction by the director, Godfrey Reggio, the film "Koyaanisqatsi" played on a projection television, interrupted now and again by digital static. After about 10 minutes, as the movie continued in the background, the lights came up -- to thunderous applause from the audience.
But these viewers weren't clapping for the cinematic poetry of "Koyaanisqatsi," which premiered in Radio City Music Hall 10 years ago. Instead, they were issuing bravos for a non-artistic achievement: The film was debuting over the public Internet.
The fact this experience was like watching television was made possible by a technology called IP multicast, which could open the way for a coming world of interactive digital entertainment and communications -- if, that is, economics and industry inertia allow it to become widely adopted.
Simply put, IP multicast in a super-efficient way of streaming huge media files over the public networks. But "It's an absolutely critical component for bringing high-quality video and audio to the Internet," said analyst Rick Villars of International Data Corp.
Villars says the multicast infrastructure partly in place is already playing a role in the popularization of multimedia events on the Net, such as the recent Webcast of a Victoria's Secret fashion show to about 1.5 million users. "Managing that kind of event, and delivering it to that scale of users ... is practically impossible without multicast."
Enormous potentials
Industry analysts say the possibilities for IP multicast are enormous.
For example, there could be television-quality broadcasts such as the "Koyaanisqatsi" premiere, which was available to any high-speed user on one of several multicast-enabled networks, including Microsoft Network (Nasdaq:MSFT) and Earthlink Network (Nasdaq:ELNK).
But that's not much different from an already-established technology -- namely television. Where it really starts to get interesting, observers say, is when you add two-way communication to the mix.
"Some central server could multicast the content out across the network ... then at the edges of the network, caches would be able to accept that multicast stream ... and just serve it up on demand," said Peter Galvin, a general manager at Inktomi Corp. (Nasdaq:INKT), which has sold the Traffic Server caching system to such companies as America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL).
In other words, interactive TV.
Multicast can also be used for broadcasting meetings to a large company, or even distributing software updates efficiently.
Mulitcast's multi-barriers
Because of those potentials, the technology has begun to catch on and has been implemented by some major Internet service providers.
For example, backbone provider UUNet in 1997 launched its UUCast service, offering companies low-cost Internet broadcasts over its multicast-enabled network.
But the demand for such services isn't yet strong enough to encourage ISPs to get around the technical and economic barriers to widely implementing multicast.
That has contributed to what multicast proponents say is the biggest barrier facing the technology today: The inability of multicast networks to work together, so that a file originating on one network can be reached from any other network.
"The investment varies for ISPs," said Martin Hall, chief technology officer for Stardust Forums, which operates the annual IP Multicast Summit. "In the last five years most standard networking equipment has included multicast capabilities ... In some cases ISPs already have it, they just have to turn it on."
Consumer connection
The most consumer-focused service providers have been the least interested in multicasting technology. At a recent press conference, Mark Cuban, CEO of Broadcast.com (Nasdaq:BCST), which hosted the servers for the Koyaanisqatsi premiere, was asked to comment about America Online's interest in multicast.
"OK, I just did," Cuban quipped.
For consumers, it also takes a high-speed home connection to the Internet, such as a cable modem, satellite receiver or DSL line, to be able to take full advantage of multicasting's possibilities. "When DSL and cable modems are more out there," said analyst Jae Kim of Paul Kagan associates, "that's when you'll see some significant pressure to roll [multicasting] out."