A commenter on Groklaw confirms something that’s obvious but needs to be spelled out often, especially for the business types who like to box everything in so they can manage and measure it (just don’t get me started) – new technology changes human behaviour, which in turn gives rise to more new technology and more stuff that is even harder to manage and measure. So there:

Multicast is built into IPv6. This means that a broadcast to 1000 people does not use 1000 times the bandwidth required to deliver the data to 1 person. In fact, it requires exactly the same amount of bandwidth as that required to deliver the data to 1 person. At least from the "broadcaster" up to the point where recipients are on different networks. At that point the data is duplicated by the router and sent along both networks. So, on any one network, the bandwidth needed is only that required to deliver the data to a single user.

This means that anybody can broadcast. Cheaply. This could bring about as large a social change as that which occurred when the Internet became popular.  If anybody can broadcast, then people will want the freedom to do so, and will want all the flexibility that goes along with it.

For the non-geeks:

IPv6 is short for "Internet Protocol Version 6". IPv6 is the "next generation" protocol designed by the IETF to replace the current version Internet Protocol, IP Version 4 ("IPv4").

via the forth place

TAGS: None