I propose Argonne turn off the unicast/multicast bridges that have been supporting the Access Grid effort, effective on Wednesday, 1 March 2000. Reasons for doing this include: - Moving forward on the Virtual Venue deployment. VV is incompatible with the use of unicast/multicast bridges. - Generally encouraging the use of native IP multicast. In lieu of supporting the unicast/multicast bridges, I would be pleased to help deploy native IP multicast at the various Access Grid sites. This can be done through the "Roll Your Own" multicast method as has been done at the University of New Mexico. Each Access Grid site would need to purchase a Cisco 2621 router if the local site IP multicast is not working well. The date of 1 March 2000 has been chosen to allow the Cisco 2621 router to be ordered and delivered before the cutoff date. See http://www.mcs.anl.gov/home/nickless/RollOwnMulticast.ppt for more information and background on this option. In parallel with a "Roll Your Own" IP multicast implementation, I would be happy to work with your local networking people to deploy IP multicast routing natively. Through the Access Grid and Chautauqua experience, the network folks have learned a lot about native multicast deployment, and we would be happy to share what we've learned with your people. Obviously comments are welcome and encouraged. === Bill Nickless http://www.mcs.anl.gov/people/nickless +1 630 252 7390 PGP:0E 0F 16 80 C5 B1 69 52 E1 44 1A A5 0E 1B 74 F7 [email protected]