Mbone (short for "multicast backbone") was an experimental backbone and virtual network built on top of the Internet for carrying IP multicast traffic on the Internet. It was developed in the early 1990s and required specialized hardware and software. [1] Since the operators of most Internet routers have disabled IP multicast due to concerns regarding bandwidth tracking and billing, the Mbone was created to connect multicast-capable networks over the existing Internet infrastructure. [1]
Mbone was created by Van Jacobson, Steve Deering and Stephen Casner in 1992 based on a suggestion by Allison Mankin. [2]
During March 16-20 1992 the first significant use of the MBONE took place from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) meeting in San Diego with 20 sites listening.
On May 23, 1993, Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees was streamed over the Mbone, [3] becoming "the first movie to be transmitted on the Internet." [4]
On June 24, 1993, the band Severe Tire Damage was the first to perform live on the Mbone.
On November 11, 1993 Sky Cries Mary performed on the Mbone from Bellevue, WA sponsored by Starwave. [5]
On August 23, 1994 the band Deth Specula broadcast the first live concert over the Mbone. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]
A November 1994 Rolling Stones concert at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas with 50,000 fans was the "first major cyberspace multicast concert." Mick Jagger opened the concert by saying, "I wanna say a special welcome to everyone that's, uh, climbed into the Internet tonight and, uh, has got into the M-bone. And I hope it doesn't all collapse." [1]
A year later the Mbone was used, this time symmetrically (simultaneous transmission and reception without hierarchy among participants), for a first experience of real-time graphical interaction without the intermediary of any Center (Poietic Generator [12] [13] ).
By 1995, there were M-bone links in Russia, as well as at the McMurdo Sound research station in Antarctica. [1] Mbone was predominantly used by research and scientific entities, including NASA. [ citation needed ]
Mbone was used for shared communication such as video teleconferences or shared collaborative workspaces. It was not generally connected to commercial Internet service providers, but often to universities and research institutions. Some other projects and network testbeds, such as Internet2's Abilene Network, made Mbone obsolete.
A "virtual room video conferencing system" (VRVS) started operation in 1997 using the Mbone, and was in operation through 2008. [14]
A revived mboned (mbone deployment) working group was chartered by the Internet Engineering Task Force in 2014, as a forum to coordinate and document multicast deployment challenges and best practices. [15]
The purpose of Mbone was to minimize the amount of data required for multipoint audio/video-conferencing. [1]
Mbone was free and it used a network of routers that support IP multicast, and it enables access to real-time interactive multimedia on the Internet. Many older routers do not support IP multicast. To cope with this, tunnels must be set up on both ends: multicast packets are encapsulated in unicast packets and sent through a tunnel. Mbone uses a small subset of the class D IP address space (224.0.0.0–239.255.255.255) assigned for multicast traffic. Mbone uses 224.2.0.0 for multimedia conferencing.[ citation needed ]
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label such as 192.0.2.1 that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface identification, and location addressing.
Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is the first version of the Internet Protocol (IP) as a standalone specification. It is one of the core protocols of standards-based internetworking methods in the Internet and other packet-switched networks. IPv4 was the first version deployed for production on SATNET in 1982 and on the ARPANET in January 1983. It is still used to route most Internet traffic today, even with the ongoing deployment of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), its successor.
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv6 was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion, and was intended to replace IPv4. In December 1998, IPv6 became a Draft Standard for the IETF, which subsequently ratified it as an Internet Standard on 14 July 2017.
Time to live (TTL) or hop limit is a mechanism which limits the lifespan or lifetime of data in a computer or network. TTL may be implemented as a counter or timestamp attached to or embedded in the data. Once the prescribed event count or timespan has elapsed, data is discarded or revalidated. In computer networking, TTL prevents a data packet from circulating indefinitely. In computing applications, TTL is commonly used to improve the performance and manage the caching of data.
A multicast address is a logical identifier for a group of hosts in a computer network that are available to process datagrams or frames intended to be multicast for a designated network service. Multicast addressing can be used in the link layer, such as Ethernet multicast, and at the internet layer for Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) or Version 6 (IPv6) multicast.
A subnetwork, or subnet, is a logical subdivision of an IP network. The practice of dividing a network into two or more networks is called subnetting.
A classful network is an obsolete network addressing architecture used in the Internet from 1981 until the introduction of Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) in 1993. The method divides the IP address space for Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) into five address classes based on the leading four address bits. Classes A, B, and C provide unicast addresses for networks of three different network sizes. Class D is for multicast networking and the class E address range is reserved for future or experimental purposes.
The Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP) is a network protocol based on the Internet protocol suite for advertisement and discovery of network services and presence information. It accomplishes this without assistance of server-based configuration mechanisms, such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) or Domain Name System (DNS), and without special static configuration of a network host. SSDP is the basis of the discovery protocol of Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) and is intended for use in residential or small office environments. It was formally described in an IETF Internet Draft by Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard in 1999. Although the IETF proposal has since expired, SSDP was incorporated into the UPnP protocol stack, and a description of the final implementation is included in UPnP standards documents.
The Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) is a communications protocol used by hosts and adjacent routers on IPv4 networks to establish multicast group memberships. IGMP is an integral part of IP multicast and allows the network to direct multicast transmissions only to hosts that have requested them.
The Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) is a computer networking protocol that provides for automatic assignment of available Internet Protocol (IP) routers to participating hosts. This increases the availability and reliability of routing paths via automatic default gateway selections on an IP subnetwork.
Van Jacobson is an American computer scientist, renowned for his work on TCP/IP network performance and scaling. He is one of the primary contributors to the TCP/IP protocol stack—the technological foundation of today’s Internet. Since 2013, Jacobson is an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) working on Named Data Networking.
In computer networking, the multicast DNS (mDNS) protocol resolves hostnames to IP addresses within small networks that do not include a local name server. It is a zero-configuration service, using essentially the same programming interfaces, packet formats and operating semantics as unicast Domain Name System (DNS). It was designed to work as either a stand-alone protocol or compatible with standard DNS servers. It uses IP multicast User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets and is implemented by the Apple Bonjour and open-source Avahi software packages, included in most Linux distributions. Although the Windows 10 implementation was limited to discovering networked printers, subsequent releases resolved hostnames as well. mDNS can work in conjunction with DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD), a companion zero-configuration networking technique specified separately in RFC 6763.
IP multicast is a method of sending Internet Protocol (IP) datagrams to a group of interested receivers in a single transmission. It is the IP-specific form of multicast and is used for streaming media and other network applications. It uses specially reserved multicast address blocks in IPv4 and IPv6.
Stephen Deering is a former Fellow at Cisco Systems, where he worked on the development and standardization of architectural enhancements to the Internet Protocol. Prior to joining Cisco in 1996, he spent six years at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, engaged in research on advanced Internet technologies, including multicast routing, mobile internetworking, scalable addressing, and support for multimedia applications over the Internet. He is a former member of the Internet Architecture Board, a past chair of numerous Working Groups of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the inventor of IP multicast, and the lead designer of the new version of the Internet Protocol, IPv6. By 2017 he was retired and living in Vancouver, British Columbia.
In computer networking, a link-local address is a network address that is valid only for communications on a local link, i.e. within a subnetwork that a host is connected to. Link-local addresses are most often unicast network addresses assigned automatically through a process known as stateless address autoconfiguration (SLAAC) or link-local address autoconfiguration, also known as automatic private IP addressing (APIPA) or auto-IP. Link-local addresses are not all unicast; e.g. IPv6 addresses beginning with ff02:, and IPv4 addresses beginning with 224.0.0. are multicast addresses that are link-local.
IEEE Internet Award is a Technical Field Award established by the IEEE in June 1999. The award is sponsored by Nokia Corporation. It may be presented annually to an individual or up to three recipients, for exceptional contributions to the advancement of Internet technology for network architecture, mobility and/or end-use applications. Awardees receive a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium.
SMART Multicast is an experimental method of Secure Reliable IP Multicast. It allows a user to forward IP datagrams to an unlimited group of receivers. See the article on multicast for a general discussion of this subject - this article is specifically about SMART IP Multicast.
Deth Specula is a Santa Cruz "neo-bronto" five-piece rock band. Deth Specula was one of the first ten bands on The Internet Underground Music Archive and used the Internet to broadcast a live music concert from the Cowell Courtyard at the SCO Forum held on the University of California in Santa Cruz on August 23, 1994. This was the first time a live music concert was broadcast over the Internet and the second netcast ever. The first song ever broadcast in a live concert over the Internet was "Internet Band", a Deth Specula parody of the Grand Funk Railroad song "We're An American Band".
The Poietic Generator is a social-network game designed by Olivier Auber in 1986, and developed from 1987 under the label free art thanks to many contributors. The game takes place within a two-dimensional matrix in the tradition of board games and its principle is similar to both Conway's Game of Life and the surrealists' exquisite corpse.
Multicast routing is one of the routing protocols in IP networking.