WG Review: IP over DVB (ipdvb)

[The IESG <iesg-secretary@ietf.org>]

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Internet Area.  
The IESG has not made any determination as yet.  The following description
was submitted, and is provided for informational purposes only.  Please send
your comments to the IESG mailing list (iesg@ietf.org) by October 27th.

IP over DVB (ipdvb)
-------------------

 Current Status: Proposed Working Group

 Description of Working Group:

 The MPEG-2 Transport Stream provides a transmission network that has become
widely use to support digital TV broadcast, including: DVB, ATSC, ISDB-T.
These, and related standards, define a set of commercially available
components that are increasingly being used to provide a general-purpose
packet transmission network. MPEG-2 Transport networks are being used to
build IP networks to supplement broadcast TV/audio services and also provide
one-way and two-way IP-only subnetworks.

 There is a need to define an efficient standardised encapsulation for IPv4
and IPv6 datagrams, and to recommend procedures for supporting protocols.
Examples include dynamic address resolution, multicast group membership
reporting and possibly management information tables and MIBs. Documents
will be defined that describe protocols required to build a complete
IPv4/IPv6 unicast/multicast services, and the mappings required to perform
dynamic address resolution. The primary purpose of this working group is to
develop a set of Internet Drafts and where appropriate to progress these as
either Internet Informational RFCs or Standards track RFCs.

 The current list of work items is:

 1. Issue an Internet Draft specifying Requirements and Framework for
supporting IP services via MPEG-2 transmission networks. Such requirements
should consider the range of platforms currently (or anticipated to be) in
use. This draft will be submitted to the IESG for possible publication as
an Informational RFC.

 2. The working group will investigate and design an efficient encapsulation
method for IPv4/IPv6, and advance this via the IESG to a standards-track
RFC. The design needs to consider the need for MAC addresses, the potential
need for synchronisation between streams, support for IPv6 and multicast
services, and support for multiple gateways (feeds).

 3. The working group will consider the options for unicast and multicast
address resolution. A working group Internet Draft will define a framework
and recommend appropriate address resolution mechanisms for IPv4 and IPv6
using both the existing Multi-Protocol Encapsulation and any new
encapsulation developed by the working group. Consideration will be paid to
existing standards, and the cases for IPv6 and IPv4 will be described. This
document will be submitted to the IESG for publication as an Informational
RFC.

 4. A working group Internet Draft will be written to recommend a set of
dynamic address resolution procedures for IPv6. It will describe the
protocol and syntax of the information exchanged. This work may be based on
an extension to the Neighbor Discovery (ND) protocol to support MPEG-2
transmission, and include specific optimisations for broadcast networks.
This document will be submitted to the IESG for publication as a
standards-track RFC.

 5. If there is a need for further supporting protocols, it will consider a
possible recharter under the guidance of the IESG. Examples in this area
include, the negotiation/association of IP QoS with MPEG-2 transport
streams, address resolution for IPv4, and the need for SNMP MIBs.