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

From: Larry Taymor <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 00:09:26 -0800

As an interested party as well as a participant in ATVEF I was wondering if
any
of the proposals for improvement mentioned below involve any WavePhore
intellectual property. I am not sure what the IETF process for dealing with
proposals of this sort is, but I would hope that the IP issue is openly
discussed before any improvements are included in the spec.

At 03:49 PM 11/30/98 , Marcel McNicoll wrote:
>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.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>-------------------
>
>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.
>