Ben's Bits

Bob Cringely has an interesting article about a new service called NeoKast which purports to make internet video broadcasting possible without requiring multicast support at the router or substantial amounts of bandwidth. I'm sure the technology is patented, which is unfortuanate as it would be nice to see some open versions of this software. As far as I can tell the NeoKast service is essentially emulating a multicast network by using peer hosts to spread the feed, in real time, to other viewers in a peer to peer manner. It's an interesting idea but perhaps its time has already come and gone. While there are some live events that attract enough viewer interest where considerable amounts of bandwidth might be saved, for the most part it seems that the future of Internet video is on demand video which is a horse of a different color and which does not benefit from this method at all, at least in its current incarnation.