The DSL Forum today announced the approval of its latest Technical Report, TR-135 Data Model for a TR-069 Enabled STB and the amendment of TR-069 — which is set to expedite IPTV rollouts and change the way operators manage their IPTV offering.
Closely following the release of BroadbandSuite Release 2.0, these new specifications are cornerstone to the pending Release 3.0, which will raise the bar to address triple-play augmented via VDSL2, GPON and bonded DSL over a QoS-enabled Ethernet architecture.
The DSL Forum said Release 3.0 will also provide support for multicast to enable IPTV streaming as well as integrated remote management of Set Top Box (STB) and attached storage devices. The full release is tentatively scheduled to complete late 2008.
TR-135 defines the data model for remote management of Digital Television (IPTV or broadcast) functionality on STB devices via CPE WAN Management Protocol (CWMP) as defined in TR-069 Amendment 2 and TR-106. This report provides the data model for describing STB capabilities such as PVR, IGMP, quality of service, as well as providing a means to enable video service performance monitoring. General use cases are also described in the report, including standard data model profiles that would typically be seen while remotely managing a device of this nature.
In TR-135, the Auto-Configuration Server (ACS) may perform some initial configuration of a newly installed STB, but its main functions are configuration of STB parameters for trouble management and collection of statistics for Quality of Service (QoS)/Quality of Experience (QoE) monitoring.
The goals of TR-135 are as follows:
- Enable configuration by the ACS of those objects and parameters that are not the responsibility of the IPTV Service Platform.
- Enable operational status monitoring and checking of specific parameters of an STB from an ACS.
- Enable performance monitoring of an arbitrary set of STBs, from one to millions, through estimates of QoS and QoE
- Support various types of STB, including DTT and IP STBs, with or without PVR and other optional functionality.
- Accommodate STB devices that are embedded as part of an Internet Gateway Device (IGD).
- Accommodate STB devices that are standalone, i.e. implemented in separate hardware devices.
The update to TR-069, TR-069 Amendment 2, which arose from collaboration and input from the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) organization. The DVB Project required support for Multicast download protocols. Working closely together, TR-069 Amendment 2 was developed and now contains changes that add support for Multicast downloads, including some additional fault codes, and for autonomous file transfers, transfers that were not directly requested by the ACS. These changes define CWMP v1.1, and therefore include some new rules for guaranteeing interoperability between CWMP v1.0, v1.1 and future CWMP versions.
