ATIS unfolds map for IPTV specs

With an eye on convergence and an ear to the entire community, the ATIS IPTV Interoperability Forum recently released its road map for an end-to-end architecture specification.

The eyes tell the working group that IPTV does not exist in a vacuum and that the specifications it develops for IPTV must support other technologies.

“The important thing is that IPTV is working in a converged network. It is not a network whose sole purpose is to do IPTV, like the original concept of cable to do only video. It will need to do VoIP, data and who knows what else,” said Dan O'Callaghan, chair of the IIF.

The ears tell the IIF that work is under way on aspects of IPTV service delivery, and it's best not to duplicate efforts.

“The IIF is not a group intent on re-writing the world,” O'Callaghan said. “Part of our charter is to identify existing standards and try to pull them in. We aren't trying to compete with other standards bodies; we're only trying to bring harmonization and coalesce their work into one end-to-end specification.”

And therein lies the rub. O'Callaghan said there are several groups working on different aspects of IPTV specifications, but not one is working on IPTV as an end-to-end service. To that end, the IIF published the IPTV Architecture Roadmap on Sept. 18. This road map prioritizes specification development efforts based on the group's IPTV Architecture Requirements document, released in June.

After its initial meeting in September 2005, the IIF launched four task forces, the last of which starts work later this month. The first three got started shortly after the meeting. They were the architecture task force, the digital rights management task force and the QOS/QOE task force, which addressed service quality and quality of the user experience. The fourth task force will deal with interoperability testing.

The groups also reached out to form liaisons with other groups such as the Consumer Electronics Association, the Digital Living Network Alliance, the Digital Video Broadcasting Project and the DSL Forum.

The DLNA is the predominant organization for defining guidelines for interoperability of home entertainment devices on a home network, said Bob Taylor, board member of DLNA and senior architect for HP. “Given the momentum DLNA has had and its broad membership, if ATIS wants to be competitive and interoperable with all these devices on the home network, working with DLNA is probably the right way to go,” he said.

However, the relationship goes two ways. Although DLNA has been involved in how content gets moved around inside the home, it hasn't been concerned with delivery. “But when you start talking IPTV, that boundary gets blurry,” Taylor said. “How the content moves from the set-top box to the TV will have a lot of IPTV characteristics, and DLNA is very interested in what we can be doing to make sure future electronic devices play well with IPTV traffic as it continues to grow.”

The result of the IIF's initial work was a three-phased approach to developing architecture specs. Phase I addresses physical layer issues such as packet loss, network attachment and service discovery as well as regulatory compliance and emergency service notification. This phase also has seen progress on technical issues in development, including remote device management, multicast network service and service provider/network interfaces.

“While it sounds lackluster, this addresses many of the more weighty issues,” O'Callaghan said.

Taylor said network attachment in particular is something that will continue to evolve. “There are a lot of initial assumptions about things like network attachment in IPTV,” he said. “People think it is something the set-top box does, but in the longer run, there is interest in how you attach and connect to services with something other than a set-top box. The timing for that and the standards necessary to make it work well are still to be determined.”

The group expects Phase I work to be complete, or close, by the end of the year. Phase II, which is scheduled to start early 2007 and finish by the end of 2007, will address transactional services such as video-on-demand (VoD) and pay-per-view. It also will address the interaction with hybrid networks comprised of satellite and other multicast and unicast networks.

The third phase gets into real-time gaming, targeted advertising, video blogging, in-home peer-to-peer activity and uploading data from the end user to the network. There is not start date for this phase.

The long-term goal of the IIF is to establish an end-to-end architecture and interface specification for TV services delivered over IP. “We're talking about the whole service. That includes all aspects and content that a current, modern-day video-delivery service would encompass,” IIF's O'Callaghan said. Those aspects include regulatory issues, parental control and emergency alert notification.

The test and interoperability task force starts this month, despite having nothing to test. The group will create the compliance and interoperability testing criteria for the new standard.

“This would allow plugfests to be conducted to ensure the standard is in fact implementable and interoperable,” O'Callaghan said.

ATIS has 50 member companies involved in IPTV standardization, including vendors and service providers.

The architecture specification is intended to allow these companies to be more innovative. “A lot of these companies have architectural expertise they can bring to bare on this framework,” O'Callaghan said.

ATIS also formed a liaison in July with the Digital Video Broadcasting Project. The DVB will assist in the joint collaboration on standards activity in support of IPTV architecture, digital rights management, content protection and copy management, and QOS metrics.

The groups will share documents for comment and evaluation and provide access to each other's meetings. The DVB is a consortium of more than 270 broadcasters, manufacturers, network operators, software developers and regulatory bodies from 35 countries and focuses on designing global standards for the global delivery of digital television and data services.

“There will be a lot of devices coming in the next few years,” DLNA's Taylor said. “If we can define how ATIS-compliant IPTV traffic can interact with those devices, it will be a win for customers telcos and device manufacturers.”

Simultaneously, ATIS is also working the operations support system (OSS) side of the house. Its CIO Council announced in July that it has developed requirements that address the specific impacts to operations and business support systems (BSS) for IPTV services. These requirements focus on the need for an OSS/BSS high-level architecture standard, a standard for the ordering framework and application program interfaces necessary to support IPTV and a directive to study Content Partner Management transactional activities and their back-office interactions.

Through its outreach and internal efforts with other groups like the CIO Council, the IIF just may come up with that elusive end-to-end architecture. Deployment won't wait until then, but it would be wise for vendors and carriers to follow its lead.

SPEC BY SPEC: A SNAPSHOT OF THE IIF'S SHORT HISTORY AND MISSION

Beginning

• IPTV Exploratory Group created by the ATIS CIO Council on March 31, 2005 • Kevin Schneider, chief technology officer of ADTRAN, and Bill DeMuth, chief technology officer of SureWest Communications, named co-chairs. • Group recommended a body of experts be formed to focus on issues that may impede the adoption of IPTV. • The ATIS Board voted to create the IPTV Interoperability Forum on June 23, 2005.

Scope

Emphasis North American and ATIS member company needs in coordination with other regional and international standards development organizations (SDOs) by: • coordinating standards activities that relate to IPTV technologies. • providing a liaison function between the various SDOs. • developing interoperability agreements, technical reports, or other standards. • providing a venue for interoperability activities. • assessing IPTV issues in the context of NGN directions.

Initial Task Forces

• Architecture • Digital rights management • Interoperability and testing • QOS metrics