GI claims spec encourages merging of standards

Electronic News, Nov 21, 1994

Hatboro, Calif. - General Instrument (GE), which has been trying to make its DigiCipher digital compression technology part of an industry standard, last week said it was making available an open-interface specification from video servers to DigiCipher 11 networks in order "to encourage the convergence of four emerging industry standards."

A GI statement also said the company planned to introduce next year its DigiCipher 11 integrated transport encryption multiplexer (ITEM1000), which it described as a gateway device. In addition, at last week's Fall/Comdex in Las Vegas, a joint GI-Novell marketing and development agreement was disclosed by Robert Frankenberg, Novell president and CEO.

GI said besides DigiCipher II, emerging industry standards covered by its proposed open-interface spec are the Synchronous Optical Network (SONET), Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG-2) industry-wide standardization efforts.

During this past year, GI has signed DigiCipher II licensing deals with chip vendors Motorola (EN, March 21), C-Cube (EN, March 28) and LSI Logic (EN, July 11), Hewlett-Packard (EN, May 30) and rival cable-converterbox maker Scientific-Atlantic (EN, Aug. 15) as well as signing a cross-licensing agreement with Zenith Electronics (EN, Feb. 14).

Critics, including cable operators, have charged GI with pushing a proprietary equipment strategy as the "information highway" is deployed (EN, Feb. 7). And, a number of other licensing deals involving partners in the Far East are reportedly on hold (EN, Antenna Sept. 26).

GI last week said its interface spec "describes the method in which industry standards have been employed to allow servers to deliver video, audio and data services directly to the home without concern for the special requirements necessary to distribute information securely, reliably and efficiently over broadband consumer distribution networks."

Geoff Roman, senior VP of technology for Gl's Communications division, said: The ITEM1000 is Gl's gateway from the video server/ATM/ SONET networking environment into Gl's DigiCipher II consumer distribution links. As more and more network operators commit to DigiCipher II and an increasing number of hardware licensees develop interoperable DigiCipher II products, it becomes increasingly important to establish open interfaces to the video storage and networking enviroment. The publication and availability of this document is a further step by General Instrument to support these open interface."

The GI statement also said that using ATM adaption layer 5 AAL-5), video servers can send single service MPEG-2 transport streams over SONET to Gl's DigiCipher II ITEM1000 which, in turn, prepares these streams for transmission over broadband cable systems.

It called the ITEM1000 "a critical component"' that extracts and reconstructs the incoming MPEG-2 single service transport multiplexes (SSTMs) from the AAL-5 cells. The component also inserts access control information and reassigns appropriate packet identifiers consistent with the MPEG-2 system specification, performs encryption of each SSTM and multiplexes the various SSTMs into up to five different multiple service transport multiplexes (MSTMs), the GI statement said.

Meanwhile, the GI-Novell agreement, which had been closed just half-an-hour before Mr. Frankenberg took the Comdex podium to make a keynote speech, "will supply a two-way service to 30 million U.S. homes," he said. Under the deal, he said, GI's cable TV customers will be able to connect to any NetWare-equipped server linked to GI's fiber network, at local area network speed.

Mr. Frankenberg maintained the agreement "finally bridges the last mile to the home," adding that the GI arrangement also underscores his notion of "pervasive computing" which are the basis for a series of Nov- ell alliances. The company is already working with AT&T for its Network Connect Services to provide easy connections between remote PCs and LANs, and has a similar deal with France Telecom in that country. Negotiations with other telecom suppliers in other European countries are also under way.

Mr. Frankenberg also outlined future directions for Novell's technology for the next two years. The Novell Embedded System Technology, he said, will allow any device with a processor and 50K bytes of memory to be hooked to a network. He predicted that NEST would appear in devices such as settop boxes for TVs and in personal digital assistants and telephones.

"Our partners will provide the actual devices embedded with NEST networking tools and software. Along with the Bell operating companies, international PTT telecommunications providers, cable operators and many other important partners, we will provide the networking infrastructure that connects to these new intelligent devices."

Over the next two years, he said, Novell plans to bring together NetWare and UnixWare in a series of stages, until the two share common microkernel called Super NOS. This will support symmetric multiprocessors and will be able to harness the power of thousands of processors,he predicted.