Subject: IP over VBI Proposal - Request for a special discussion at IETF m eeting

From: Marcel McNicoll <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 18:49:05 -0500

WavePhore WaveTop, Inc. is requesting a special discussion (BOF) during the
IPVBI working group session in Orlando, on Thursday, December 10. We
understand we're a bit late, regarding the normal procedure for such
request, though it was originally sent personally to Dan Zigmond on November
18th. But we firmly believe its significance is critical enough to pursue it
at this point in time. We also understand that, due to the already short
time devoted to the session (1300-1500h), you might not find the time frame
to fully discussed this issue into the existing IPVBI Working Group agenda.
In this case, we can propose an "extended" discussion at a different
location - provided by us - in the days before or after the formal IPVBI
session.

The following is a description of the issue we want to address.

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As you know, WavePhore is a Media Delivery company that has been involved in
data broadcasting technology and services for years.  More specifically, we
have developed and are using VBI technologies and protocols for the delivery
of WaveTop, our consumer service.

We started engineering VBI technology in the eighties when data broadcasting
or the Internet were unknown, and we are now at our fourth generation and
more of VBI codecs, protocols and forward error correction (FEC).  During
that time our VBI systems have evolved from being entirely proprietary, to
adopting open standards such as UDP and IP Multicast.

We have recently joined the ATVEF as an adopter, and are participating in
the process of preparing the Advanced TV specification.  We initially
believed that the specification would define standards starting at a level
common to any ATVEF distribution network, whether analog or digital, hence
beginning at the transport level: IP Multicast.  In that scenario, the
actual binding of IP Multicast to NABTS would have been open, and WavePhore
or any other provider could have used the framing, network layer and FEC of
his choice while preserving compatibility at the transport layer.  

We learned however that the ATVEF intended to recommend the usage of the IP
over VBI binding proposed by the IETF, and that adoption of this
specification would be required for compliance.  We are familiar with the
IETF proposed standard because it has evolved from the same scheme initially
developed by Canadian researchers in the '80s that we have also been using
as a base.  The IETF proposed standard is similar the FEC WavePhore was
using about 4 years ago, but we have made some significant improvements to
it since then, and has plans to still improve it in the upcoming months.

It is WavePhore's intent to make its systems ATVEF compliant, but at the
same time, it wouldn't make sense for us to roll back to technologies that
we have been using before, and that we believe are less performant than what
we are using today.  We believe the ATVEF and the industry in general can
greatly benefit from the improvements we made to VBI data broadcasting
technology, and from our experience in operating the only nationwide
commercial service delivered through VBI.  Therefore, WavePhore wishes to
present its improvements to VBI protocols and FEC to the IETF, with the
objective of incorporating them into the proposed standard.  Our
improvements touch primarily:

* FEC improvement for Multi-line (high bandwidth) reliability

* Flexible framing

* Optimization for Ghost canceling and Adaptive equalizing

* Protocol overhead reduction

We will be more than glad to share the technical details of our protocol and
FEC with you and the IETF sub-committee when appropriate.  It is our intent
to participate in the upcoming IETF meeting in Orlando.

Marcel Mc Nicoll
Streaming and Interactive Media Specialist
WaveTop Lead Technology Group
[email-masked] 

on behalf of:

Patrick Gilbert
[email-masked]
Sr. Vice-President & CTO
WavePhore WaveTop, Inc.