Subject: mboned: CastGate auto-multicast tunneling Demo

From: Pieter Liefooghe <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 19:31:37 +0100

Hello,

To demonstrate to you the possibilities of the CastGate auto-multicast 
tunneling solution I have set up a page at 
http://www.castgate.net/IETF.htm which allows unicast-only end-users 
access to the IETF multicast channels. You only need a recent Java 
Virtual machine and a media palyer (QuickTime, VideoLAN client or 
RealPlayer, ...) and "trust" the CastGate JAVA applet that was signed by 
"Vrije Universiteit Brussel FV". The technology has been confirmed to 
work on Windows, MAC OS X and Linux. If there are things not working 
thaen visit the help pages for each  op the players (cfr. question marks).

Please note that a this moment there seems to be problems with the 
transmissions in H261!

Feel free to forward this to collegues who were maybe not able to attend 
the DC meeting.

The CastGate Auto Multicast tunneling technology is described in an 
Internet draft which can be found at 
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-liefooghe-castgate-02.txt
Version -00 was presented at the 50th IETF meeting in Minneapolis.

For those interested in the technology behind it find here a brief 
description:

In the demo pages we embedded a Signed JAVA Applet implementation of the 
CastGate Client protocol. When loaded it gets channel information 
through the EMBED parameters. It then uses a Hierarchical Tunnel 
Database system to obtain a list of Tunnel Servers (Servers Located in 
Mcast Enabled part of the Internet.) coarsly appropriate for his 
location (Country matching and/or longest prefix matching). This lookup 
is then followed by a measurement - at application level - of the 
performance of the paths towards the returned Tunnel Servers to achieve 
congestion avoidance and loadbalancing. The Tunnel Server giving the 
best performance is chosen and a tunnel is established. This Tunnel uses 
the (modified) UMTP protocol (cfr. Ross Finlayson for original UMTP 
spec. For modifications see CastGate ID)  over UDP or HTTP. The latter 
is the default operation mode for the JAVA Applet because our 
field-trials showed that a lot of SOHO NAT devices are broken with 
respect to fragmented UDP. It further allows easy firewall traversal (we 
only need port 80 and 8080 to be open.). In the JAVA case we perform 
pure application level tunneling (only the payload is tunneled) and the 
tunneled data is locally re-multicasted. This is then "rendered" by the 
media player that is embedded in the web page.

We also have a router implementation (currently only win32) that 
combines an IGMPv3 querier with the CastGate client part. In this case 
it uses RAW tunneling - so the whole IP packet is tunneled. From a 
end-users perspective this is as good as real IP Multicast connectivity 
(Receive ASM and SSM, Send ASM) and allows to multicast enable a whole 
LAN segment. This router uses UDP tunneling. HTTP is forseen but not 
implemented yet.

This technology can be deployed privately (only give access to MCAST for 
some of your customer's network(s)) or publically.

For the Public deployment we currently collaborate with BELNET (Belgian 
Research and Government Internet Provider) . BELNET currently hosts - 
the only - two public CastGate Servers.

But we are looking for ISPs/Carriers/Universities wo would be interested 
in running "public" CastGate Tunnel Servers. Deployment is VERY easy... 
if interested just drop me an E-mail.

More information can be obtained by visiting http://www.castgate.net/ 
about section or by contacting me.

BTW: If you want access to the sessions being announced through SDR then 
visit http://www.castgate.net/ and select Demo. The IETF sessions are 
also in there but it seems that from time to time the announcements 
dissapear...so this is why I made that separate page dedicated to the 
IETF sessions!

Enjoy the MBone!

Pieter
--
dr. ir. Pieter Liefooghe
Vrije Universiteit Brussel ETRO/TW
TELE Research Group
Pleinlaan 2
1050 Brussel
Belgium
Phone: +32-2-6292977

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