Announcement of opportunity by ESA/ESTEC to support IP-over-DVB activities

[Frank.Zeppenfeldt@esa.int]

Dear ip-over-dvb-interested,

We would like to use this reflector to draw your attention to an ITT
(Invitation to Tender)  AO 4372 which ESA (European Space Agency) has
published on its website: http://emits.esa.int/ . This is the result of a
request for ideas in
http://www.erg.abdn.ac.uk/users/gorry/ip-dvb/archive/msg00238.html

The aim of the tender is to support developments related to emerging ideas on
IP encapsulations and IP services over DVB-S/RCS. A number of Tasks have been
described in this tender, such as:

- make an inventory of on-going IP-over-DVB activities within fora such as
DVB-CM, DVB-RCS, DVB-GBS, DVB IP Datacasting, ATSC, DVB-S2, DVB-SI DAT, DAB,
IP Datacasting Forum, etc.
- evaluate current MPE methods;
- develop proof-of-concept implementations for improved encapsulation methods
in receivers (IRDs) and senders (IP encapsulators/gateways);
- prove interoperability with parallel implementations;
- demonstrate applications that use new encapsulation methods, such as VoIPv6
or MPLS, or applications that demonstrate the more efficient use of the
satellite capacity.

We acknowledge that the title "Standardisation Support of enhanced IETF IP
Encapsulation Techniques"  may sound a bit limiting, but we encourage you to
have look at the contents of the Statement of Work and discover that there is
room to investigate issues which are outside of the pure encapsulation topic,
such as address resolution, service announcements issues (INT/MMT), etc.

The tender is open until 1 April 2003, and the idea is to initiate two
parallel contracts.

All correspondance needs to go via the official channels, have a look at
http://emits.esa.int/ for all official information.

Best regards,

Frank.Zeppenfeldt@esa.int
http://telecom.esa.int/
D-APP/TSM
ESA/ESTEC (European Space & Technology Centre)