The CastGate project

Internet multicast may become of crucial importance in the upcoming digital multimedia distribution. While implemented in almost all networking and end-user's systems, deployment is blocked by the "multicast deadlock": network providers do not enable it due to it nearly not being used, making in turn the use of it not an option for content providers. CastGate is a transitional technology to allow content providers to give their customers transparent "simulated" multicast access trough tunneling to public multicast tunnel servers. The increasing volume of multicast traffic may then provide an incentive to (commercial) network providers to enable multicast to Internet users.