CableLabs Releases Eleven PacketCable 1.0 Specifications.LOUISVILLE, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 7, 1999-- Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. (CableLabs(R)) has completed the PacketCable(TM) 1.0 specification work and has publicly released eleven PacketCable interim specifications and five technical reports. The sixteen documents provide, in detail, the core functional components and interfaces necessary to implement the PacketCable 1.0 architecture. Together, these specifications represent a comprehensive end-to-end solution (jargon) end-to-end solution - (E2ES) A term that suggests that the supplier of an application program or system will provide all the hardware and/or software components and resouces to meet the customer's requirement and no other supplier need be involved. Compare: turn-key solution. for the delivery of PacketCable-based services over a cable system. The specifications are the result of nearly two years of cooperative effort involving literally hundreds of engineers from dozens of companies. Each of the specifications has undergone a thorough review by the vendor community as well as CableLabs' member companies. The specifications are available at www.cablelabs.com or www.packetcable.com. PacketCable is a CableLabs-led initiative aimed at developing interoperable interface specifications for delivering advanced, real-time multimedia services over two-way cable plant. Built on top of the industry's highly successful cable modem cable modem Modem used to convert analog data signals to digital form and vise versa, for transmission or receipt over cable television lines, especially for connecting to the Internet. infrastructure, PacketCable networks will use Internet protocol See Internet and TCP/IP. (networking) Internet Protocol - (IP) The network layer for the TCP/IP protocol suite widely used on Ethernet networks, defined in STD 5, RFC 791. IP is a connectionless, best-effort packet switching protocol. (IP) technology to enable a wide range of multimedia services, such as IP telephony The two-way transmission of voice over a packet-switched IP network, which is part of the TCP/IP protocol suite. The terms "IP telephony" and "voice over IP" (VoIP) are synonymous. , multimedia conferencing See videoconferencing and data conferencing. , telecommuter A person who telecommutes. See telecommuting. services, and other integrated multimedia applications. "This accomplishment represents a key milestone in the PacketCable project," said CableLabs President and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. , Dr. Richard R. Green. "With these specifications publicly released, any vendor now has the information necessary to build products compatible with the PacketCable architecture," he added. "These specifications move the industry decidedly forward towards its goal of delivering high-quality, full-featured internet protocol-based voice services to our customers," said Mark Coblitz, Comcast's Vice President of Strategic Planning Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. and a key executive in the PacketCable project. "In addition, they lay the groundwork for an entirely new class of interactive multimedia services," he said. PacketCable 1.0 defines the fundamental requirements for call signaling, quality-of-service, media stream, client provisioning, billing event message collection, PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) The worldwide voice telephone network. Once only an analog system, the heart of most telephone networks today is all digital. In the U.S. interconnection, and security interfaces necessary to implement a single-zone PacketCable solution for residential voice services. A zone is the set of customer premises equipment See CPE. that can be controlled by a single call management server or cluster of servers within the PacketCable network. A typical zone could encompass somewhere between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Future additions to the PacketCable specifications will define the protocols necessary for the zones to interoperate across service provider boundaries, as well as define additional feature capabilities, such as PBX (Private Branch eXchange) An inhouse telephone switching system that interconnects telephone extensions to each other as well as to the outside telephone network (PSTN). extension and multimedia conferencing. "The PacketCable specifications will provide the basis for open, multi-vendor solutions which will enable the industry to utilize the best of what the vendors have to offer in a flexible way," said Jim Ehlinger, Chair of the PacketCable Technical Committee and AT&T Consumer Network Services Vice President. "We are very pleased with the progress that CableLabs, the MSOs, and the vendors have made in developing the PacketCable specifications and look forward to the commercial availability of PacketCable-based products. We believe that these specifications provide the foundation to deploy cost-effective technologies that will enable the industry to migrate from circuit to packet solutions in an evolutionary way," he added. Several of the vendors participating in the PacketCable project already are developing products based on the specifications. Some of these products will be demonstrated in the CableNET(R) '99 Outside the Box booth at the cable industry's Western Show, December 15-17, in the Los Angeles Convention Center The Los Angeles Convention Center (abbreviated LACC) is a convention center in downtown Los Angeles. The LACC hosts annual events such as the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show, and was best known to video games fans as host to E3 until its cessation in 2006. . One of the highlights of the interoperability demonstration will be a group of phone booths from which visitors can place phone calls, free of charge, to anywhere in the continental United States United States territory, including the adjacent territorial waters, located within North America between Canada and Mexico. Also called CONUS. using PacketCable technology. Each of the booths will use a different combination of vendors' products interoperating with each other to route calls across the on-site cable network and out to the public switched telephone network for completion. CableLabs is a research and development consortium of cable television system operators representing the continents of North America and South America. CableLabs plans and funds research and development projects that will help cable companies take advantage of future opportunities and meet future challenges in the cable television industry. It also transfers relevant technologies to member companies and to the industry. In addition, CableLabs acts as a clearinghouse to provide information on current and prospective technological developments that are of interest to the cable industry. CableLabs maintains web sites at www.cablelabs.com; www.cablemodem.com; www.cablenet.org; www.opencable.com; and www.packetcable.com. |
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