CableLabs® Adopts IPDR Streaming Protocol into OCAP™ Version 1.1 Set-Top Box

NANTUCKET, Mass. — The Internet Protocol Detail Record Organization (IPDR.org) today announced that Cable Television Laboratories, CableLabs®, the cable industry’s research and development consortium, has adopted IPDR.org’s technologies into its OpenCable™ Application Platform (OCAP™) Version 1.1 initiative. Specifically, the set-top box (STB) mechanism for metrics gathering – a critical function of the OCAP 1.1 specification – will be using IPDR Streaming Protocol (IPDR/SP), for encoding and transmitting metrics to a collections system within the cable operator. The evolving JSR 190, the Java Community Process (JCP) specification of an API for event reporting from JavaME platforms embedded the IPDR/SP for the same purpose. Once the adoption is complete all OCAP 1.1 set-top boxes will have the IPDR Streaming Protocol.

The full set of IPDR.org technologies include the IPDR/Streaming Protocol (IPDR/SP) transport, the IPDR binary encoding, along with open source code of reference implementations and development tools for integration of the technology into vendor solutions.

IPDR.org’s President and COO Kelly Anderson explained, “The integration of IPDR.org technologies into OCAP represents a significant impact to the cable industry and offers cable operators the capability of providing detailed metrics from the home network with next generation television, communication and entertainment. This proves a valuable capability for MSOs and a functionality that they have been requesting for some time, and it will have a large impact on the cable industry in the coming year.”

“CableLabs’ has already adopted IPDR Streaming Protocol for DOCSIS and their experience has prepared them for today’s next-generation of open STB requirements. Cable MSOs will now benefit from extensible and scalable data collection capabilities that will allow them to leverage a variety of new business models and applications for their services,” said Tal Givoly, Chief Scientist at Amdocs, Director of IPDR.org, and also chair of the organization’s Protocol Working Group. “Amdocs is proud to have been a contributor to this achievement and intends to strongly support its continued success.”

Frank Sandoval, Director, OCAP Specifications in the CableLabs Advanced Platforms and Services Department, said the IPDR technology was a great fit for the OpenCable specifications. “We greatly appreciate the support we received from IPDR and its members.”

IPDR Streaming Protocol is also well-adopted by the industry, as evident by its approval by the Alliance for Telecommunication Industry Solutions’ (ATIS) as an American National Standard for Service-neutral Usage Data Management (ATIS-0300075.1.2006). IPDR/SP is also in various processes of incorporation into standards related to IPTV, Next Generation Networks (NGN), and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS).