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Blockcast Network - Light Paper (It's a WIP)
  • Welcome to Blockcast Network
  • Intro
    • The Internet Capacity Crunch
  • Overview
    • What is Blockcast?
    • Mission And Values
    • How Blockcast Works
    • Ecosystem Roles
  • Building Blocks
    • Control Plane
      • dCDN Controller
      • CDN Interconnect
      • Challenge Coordination
      • Service Contracts
    • Data Plane
      • Multicast HTTP Adaption
      • Multicast Backbone
      • Traffic Router
    • Consensus Layer
  • Getting Started
    • How Do I Participate in The Network
      • BEACON
        • Start Running your BEACON Today
        • BEACON Common Questions
      • RELAY
      • CAST
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Multicast Backbone

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Last updated 6 months ago

Multicast Backbone

Not every part of the internet is multicast-enabled. Multicast is only enabled in “islands”, either over the air with satellite/terrestrial TV/cellular broadcast, or over cables in certain network pockets. As ISPs don’t peer multicast, there is no way to access these services from the outside. Blockcast solves this problem by enabling the community to operate RELAY infrastructure that grows the coverage of multicast, bridging them into new islands where multicast is enabled.

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Blockcast RELAY node operators assist their ISP by acquiring streams from multicast sources that can’t be reached from within the ISP, using an over-the-air antenna, or tunneling it over unicast using a lightweight VPN protocol called Automatic Multicast Tunnels (AMT). RELAYs improve delivery efficiency, reducing the backhaul utilization of their ISPs, and improve quality to end-users.

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