Why is so much of IPv4 allocated to multicast when it cannot be used by the public at large ? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I found the multicast registery here.

https://www.iana.org/assignments/multicast-addresses/multicast-addresses.xhtml

I already knew that addresses between 224.0.0.1 and 239.255.255.255 are reserved by multicast.

Obviously multicast could be immensely useful if used by the general public, it would obsolete much of facebook, youtube, nearly all CDNs (content delivery networks), would kill cloudflare and company's business model and just re-arrange the internet with far reaching social implication.

So, why hasn't all these multicast addresses been converted in usable private IPv4 unicast address space ?

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[-] plz1@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

I think you are missing the part of the intent of the question. Multicast is wasteful in a large chunk of IPv4 range. If it were a smaller range, the leftover IP's would be available for general use.

You're correct in that it wouldn't help for the other reasons OP noted, since CDN's do all that heavy lifting already, and do it better than pure multicast could (geo-location, for example).

this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025

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