Broadband Services Using Databroadcasting and Point-to-Point Networks

An ever-growing demand for rich multimedia services puts enormous strain on servers and transport network under the current centralized delivery paradigms of the Internet. Consequently, they often fail to deliver a broadband user experience. Delivery models based on digital broadcast transport mechanisms can effectively bypass these bottlenecks. Broadcast networks are able to efficiently convey large volumes of data, delivering it either directly to end-consumers or replicating it across servers and caching engines, which are deployed at the network's edge for the scalable delivery of this content. Such a combination of broadcast services and point-to-point access to information residing in entities on the network edge is considered the ideal environment for the definition and delivery of new service offerings, effectively combining push- and pull- models for the delivery of a rich multimedia user experience, including live-streaming events and on-demand services. — This paper defines broadband services and then describes the enabling technologies involved in realizing that experience. We continue discussing the aspects involved in broadcast and point-to-point delivery models, raging from transport issues, to functionalities required in the aggregation, playout and caching/storage domain. Broadcasting requires scheduling and bandwidth management mechanisms. Subscriber management, protection and billing functionalities are required for broadcasting services as well as for point-to-point delivery services. We conclude by describing a fully converged network with the IP protocol as the central layer of convergence and describe its applications in a special realization of the Multimedia Car Platform project of the European commission.

Published

2001-02

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M00351

ISBN

978-1-61482-934-8