[ih] IPv8...

[Barbara Denny]

 I believe MBONE in the Internet  grew out of  DARTnet's MBONE (DARTnet was an ARPA/DARPA project.  I can never keep straight which name to use for projects sometimes). The follow-on to DARTnet was CAIRN.  i don't know if CAIRN projects had funding for the MBONE. Allison Mankin might be able to fill in this part of the story (Some other people who could probably say more include Steve Deering, Dave Clark, John Worclawski,  Lixia, Van, and Deborah Estrin. There are others but unfortunately some of them are no longer with us). I worked on DARTnet but not CAIRN.
We have had other email about what else was done on DARTnet.
barbara
    On Tuesday, April 21, 2026 at 01:59:23 PM PDT, Greg Skinner via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 On Apr 21, 2026, at 10:20 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Can anyone summarize the history of the *use* of "multicast" in The Internet?  I know the various protocols and such are probably well described in publications such as RFCs and research reports, but I'm wondering about the historical timeline of the actual implementation and use of multicast in the Internet we have all used for years or decades now.
> 
> For example, I remember the "Mbone" which was used for lots of experimentation in the 1980s.    IIRC, Mbone had some kind of support for multicast, and required that routers along the path you were using through the Internet had to have implemented the protocols and algorithms for the multicast mechanisms of the time. This affected activities such as the various projects experimenting with interactive voice over the Internet in the 1980s.  The Mbone was in effect a subset of The Internet.
> 
> Almost 50 years later, it's pretty common for people to be using the Internet in ways that would seem to benefit from use of some kind of modern "multicast" scheme.  A typical example would be teleconferencing, using Zoom, Meet, Facetime, or any of the other similar systems.  I use such things frequently; you probably do too.
> 
> None of those systems seem to be "interoperable", i.e., able to hold conferences where different participants use different companies' technology to participate in a single conference.  Do they actually use the standards for multicast defined in RFCs?
> 
> Does the "Mbone" still exist as a subset of The Internet?  Did it grow and evolve over time to become part of today's ubiquitous Internet infrastructure or did it just disappear?
> 
> I replaced my home routers last year.  The old routers, bought a few years ago, still work but are sitting on a shelf, and I just got a notice from the manufacturer that they are now considered obsolete.  But I don't remember that either the new ones or old ones promoted themselves as "Supports Multicast!!" or anything like that.  I also don't remember any of the teleconferencing schemes saying anything like "Requires Multicast Routers!!".
> 
> So it's hard to tell if any multicast technology is actually needed, or even present, or used at all in The Internet today.
> 
> Perhaps multicast mechanisms are just no longer needed?  With the planet being increasingly woven into a spider's nightmare blanket of fiber, and also being encapsulated by tens of thousands of satellites weaving complex webs of radio and laser beams, does efficiency matter as much as we worried about in the early days of The Internet?
> 
> What's the history of the *use* of multicast as the Internet has grown and changed over time?
> 
> /Jack Haverty
> 

Regarding the Mbone, it no longer exists. There is an active IETF WG, mboned, that is involved in standardizing various types of multicast technology and infrastructure. [1] At the individual company level, I believe that type of information is available in literature such as their technical whitepapers. For example, Zoom’s architecture and design page mentions some IETF protocols. [2]

I wish I had more time to participate, but I wanted to make a general comment about the “visibility” of IETF protocols to the consumer (e.g. your noting that your routers aren’t promoted as supporting multicast).  My impression is that most consumer-grade equipment is promoted and marketed based on what a typical consumer’s last mile is, such as some IEEE 802 protocol.  But wasn’t this part of the original design concept of the Internet, that it would run on top of lots of different types of networks?  Customers don’t have to worry about specific IETF protocols.

--gregbo

[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mboned/documents/
[2] https://library.zoom.com/admin-corner/architecture-and-design/zoom-architected-for-reliability