Customer Reviews

Mbone: Multicasting Tomorrow's Internet

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First of all, this book is pretty old, and a dinosaur by Internet standards. It really shows its age during the first few chapters, where the authors describe the Internet as it was back then, together with an overview of the relevant technology. As far as the Multicast Backbone (MBONE) itself is concerned, the description is fairly accurate, with a reprint of an article from the IEEE Computer Magazine, set of requirements, applications, and a couple of Request For Comments.

In general there is not much depth in it, and I could say that some of the predictions made about MBONE's growth as a virtual multicasting protocol are proven wrong by themselves today. Of course, this is easy for anyone to say today -- that's what predictions are for!

I'm sure the book would be very good back then, but you are better off researching about MBONE yourself, really; I would not expect anyone familiar with it to learn anything from this book. If you can get it at a good price go ahead and have it, just for the sake of it: It makes references to those good old 2400bps modems, describes 28.8Kbps modem owners "lucky", but, best of all, reminds us of Mosaic!