Data Broadcasting: The Changing Landscape

By Peter J. Brown

The data broadcasting market is no easy thing to define these days. Can you blame it on the growing number of Gigabit Ethernet routers? Not exactly, but boundaries are certainly blurring as an IP-centric world emerges where lots of IP data is in motion. So many variations of the data broadcasting theme are cropping up that it is hard to sort through them.

In this IP centric world, how does data broadcasting really differ from content delivery, if at all? As you will see, there is a wide range of opinion on this issue.

"I don’t see a difference," says Peter Neu, manager product marketing at ND Satcom in Friedrichshafen, Germany, which has Skystream Networks as a data broadcasting partner.

"There is a difference. Content delivery implies serving information from a location that is closer to the user than the origin," says David Lerner, COO of Certeon Inc. in Waltham, MA. Certeon formed earlier this year through the acquisition of InfoLibria’s assets, including its information distribution products.

"Secure data broadcasting largely refers to real-time delivery of time critical data that could represent any type of content including video, audio, stock data and file distribution," says Sam Attisha, national director of sales for Irdeto Access. "Secure content delivery refers to a wider scope of real-time and non real-time delivery of digital assets in physical form as files, for example. Typically this distribution method has a one-to-one relationship, but does not exclude one-to-many delivery."

"The landscape is changing fast in terms of new technology. Content delivery and data broadcasting are the same thing," says David Spechman, CEO of Globecast America in Miami. "All the boundaries are blurred in this IP-centric world. And yet even as more video gets turned over to data, the traditional push, point-to-multipoint model remains unchanged."

What is happening here? For one thing, the marriage of IP and Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) supplemented by new tools and techniques such as the Multiple Protocol Encapsulation (MPE) standard is proving to be a wildly successful phenomenon unto itself.

"The data broadcasting market is still in its early days and experts continue to predict substantial growth throughout the next five to 10 years," says Ron Clifton, president and CEO of Ottawa-based International Datacasting. "The business case for satellite broadcasting is simply unbeatable, plus more end-users are realizing that IP via satellite is now plug and play with terrestrial networks."

Not New, Nor Stagnant

By the late 1980’s, a number of companies including Reuters, Dow Jones and Co., the Associated Press, Thomson Financial, PR Newswire, Business Wire, McGraw-Hill’s Standard and Poor’s ComStock division, and approximately 30 other information companies adopted a solution from Mainstream Data in Utah. The company combined terrestrial FM radio data broadcasting with a small-dish satellite service, says Company President Scott Calder.

Initially, this involved an Equatorial Communications’ spread spectrum C-band platform before it ultimately evolved into a proprietary FM2/Ku-band SCPC solution. A successful line of data broadcast satellite receivers also emerged for customers like the Stockholm Stock Exchange, the Shenzhen (China) Stock Exchange, and for most of the major business music providers such as AEI/DMX, 3M and Muzak/Alcas. But look again, and see how things have changed.

"The advent of the Internet brought with it several things, including the reality of ubiquitous interconnected computing, a dominant worldwide transmission protocol and a new economic reality that had dramatically reduced the premium one had to pay for interactivity (compared to broadcast)," says Calder.

The company’s Medias platform acts as a communications terminal, provides integration of broadcast and Web content and performs as an application server as well. The European Pressphoto Association (EPA) selected Mainstream Data’s Medias Server to distribute its photographs from Iceland to Greece, and from the Azores to Russia. It provides a communications and Web applications-enabled platform for information companies.

"Mainstream Data has adapted quickly," says Calder, whose company has teamed up with Airpath Wireless to address the growing ranks of Wi-Fi users via satellite-enabled hot spot buildouts, another potentially lucrative data broadcasting opportunity.

He is convinced that the era of a data broadcast business isolated from the greater data communications industry has passed. Traditional data broadcasters who purchased bulk satellite capacity from Panamsat, Loral and SES Americom only to resell it in smaller slices are being crushed by a declining market on the one hand and by vertically integrating suppliers-become-competitors on the other.

"In fact, it may already be too late for data broadcast companies that have not seen the future to embrace it. Traditional data broadcasters who have not already made the turn by adding applications to their transmission are dinosaurs and are destined for extinction," Calder says. "By contrast, we are capitalizing on our large base of blue-chip customers, and facilitating the integration of broadcast and interactive technologies as we move into a world where customers care about information, not transmission."

Enhanced Data Broadcasting

Whereas traditional data broadcasting simply moves information to multiple clients and receive sites, what might be best described as enhanced data broadcasting from companies like Certeon involves the transmission of both information and the applications that use them together to the receive sites, and the information is served from that location. Users can benefit from the higher performance experience while overcoming network obstacles by using Certeon’s secure information sharing technology.

"We are helping to get information to where it needs to be using minimal, narrowband or intermittent bandwidth in a secure mode, whether it involves a multicast or TCP/IP satellite link," says Lerner. "We are creating a synchronized information landscape for an increasingly mobile world where connectivity is not always on."

Not all the information or applications in question may be in motion at any one time. Many can be prepositioned or stored. With the Certeon distribution platform, information is aggregated from publishers, information updates are detected, and information changes are securely propagated to the appropriate receive sites. At the receive site, information is rehosted on the Media Mall, a Swiss Army knife of server functionality that bundles file serving, Web serving, application serving, video stream serving, cache serving and firewalling.

Certeon’s customers use this information distribution platform to enable applications such as distance learning, corporate communications, fixed information kiosks and mobile situational awareness platforms.

"We cover everything from the rapid and dynamic updating of information in a fast-moving tactical environment to the distribution of courseware as part of a centralized and integrated distance learning solution," says Lerner.

Government organizations such as the U.S. Marine Corps and Army Forces Command deployed the Certeon distribution platform to enable critical information to be accessed by soldiers anywhere in the world. Sent through narrowband, intermittent and occasionally connected networks, this new generation of managed information distribution systems is suited for Ka-band networks, for example, optimizing the efficiency of the broadband outbound and narrowband inbound links while providing advanced information delivery services.

"The influence of customers and market movers alike such as Intel and Microsoft are being felt here. The whole trend toward mobile computing revolves around a broad range or suite of applications deployed at the edge, communicating via a .NET Web services infrastructure," says Lerner. "In this setting, connectivity is abstracted. Applications still run and work when there is no connectivity whatsoever. [The year] 2003 will be remembered as the year in which the broad industry embraced Web services-enabled mobile computing as demonstrated by a spate of recent product releases from industry leaders such as Microsoft, Sun and Oracle."

Security Is Key

For content distribution software and edge appliance vendors, presenting data broadcasting options to customers involves more than straight, reliable delivery options. Tackling the issue of security head on is a vital concern.

"Security is key to many applications and mission-critical for a large number of our customers," says Clifton at International Datacasting, which is making strides in the area of high-throughput performance critical for applications such as digital cinema, government networks and financial services, to name just three. "We offer two levels of conditional access/encryption–one on the IP level, and the other on the transport level. Each has its own merits depending on the customer application and they can even be combined for an ultra high degree of security."

International Datacasting works with Irdeto Access and built its technology into International Datacasting’s latest receiver appliances, including the SRA2100 and SFX2100 receivers. Both have two industry-standard options. For IP level Conditional Access System (CAS), Irdeto Cyphercast is built in, while for transport layer CAS, open-standard DVB Common Interface (CI) CAS is used, such as Irdeto, Nagra, etc. The content distribution system, Datacast XD, comes with 128-bit fixed-key Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption for both streams and files, which is adequate for a moderate level of security.

"We have been doing encryption in our systems since 1998 and experience helps. It is simply a question of good system design and following open standards. End users need to be sure that they will still achieve the data rates they expect with encryption and that they will be able to encrypt the number of PIDs (Packet Identifiers) they require. Some encryption strategies put severe limits on these," says Clifton.

"The infrastructure will typically contain a Web-based file server with a security layer on top to protect asset access and download. Potentially the assets could also contain some security wrapper (i.e. DRM) to limit its use," adds Attisha of Irdeto Access.

"The edge devices generally have no impact on the security of the data if the data is only routed and distributed in its encrypted form," adds Attisha. "In the case where the edge device has the capability to decrypt the data, it becomes a challenge to secure. Irdeto Access works with edge device vendors and performs Design Verification Tests (DVT) on all edge devices enabled to decrypt services to ensure that the security requirement is met."

Coping With Legacy Networks And VPNs

Because heritage or legacy systems are out there in great numbers, and because it can be expensive to convert them, International Datacasting has provided legacy compatibility and platforms to help customers migrate to full IP solutions, as their budgets allow.

"For new systems, it is still a tradeoff, but we are seeing more people opt for the all-IP solution. Take MPEG-4, for example, even though the standards have not settled down yet, it offers a considerable savings in bandwidth cost, depending on the applications," says Clifton. "Low-end products designed for consumer applications have fundamental performance problems compared with those developed for the demands of the enterprise market. It is important to understand the differences between vendors, and insist on open standards."

As for data broadcasting over Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), and any special considerations when it comes to overall performance and security, Clifton says that the most important advantage that satellite data broadcasting has over terrestrial VPN networks is the point-to-multipoint economic model.

"In comparing satellite to terrestrial VPNs, it all boils down to how much bandwidth and how many locations. For example, a 200-site broadband terrestrial VPN network could cost $100,000 per month. A satellite broadcasting network with the same number of locations would incur a fraction of that cost for bandwidth with higher availability and be more reliable," says Clifton.

"Yes, the popularity of VPNs is certainly increasing, and although the emphasis on private networks is becoming less, they will remain important for clients that require stronger access control and QOS," says Attisha.

As far as encounters with Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)-enabled networks, Attisha emphasizes that among other things, there is currently no established method for MPLS payload encryption.

"The same issues of data security apply to MPLS as to any other network Layer 2 or Layer 3 transport mechanism. When it comes to MPLS over satellite, any data can be encapsulated and transported via satellite, but the security needs increase with the size of the pirate audience," says Attisha. "Satellite networks will follow the trends in the network industry but more strongly their customers’ needs. It is relatively easy to convert an existing IP or ATM satellite network to MPLS, but the receiving devices might very well be the bottleneck."

The End Of One-Way VSATs?

In late June, Israel-based Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. signed a deal with Bulgaria-based Petrol Bulgaria and Transat JSC to deploy Gilat’s DVB-based Skystar 360E hub and more than 500 Skystar VSATs primarily in gas stations and corporate offices in Bulgaria and Eastern Europe. The days of the one-way VSAT may not be over, but in case after case, customers are eager to exploit the advantages of robust and cost efficient two-way VSATs that can support a variety of interactive broadband IP and multicasting applications.

"Gilat’s one-way solutions are now more often a portion of a two-way network," says to Ran Livnat, product manager for satellite IP with Gilat’s interactive VSAT product management group. "The business is changing. We are also seeing a trend involving companies that are running their virtual private networks over an outsourced satellite network as well.

"Content distribution services including data broadcasting are leased from full service providers as in the case of the Connexstar service provided by Spacenet, which is Gilat’s U.S. subsidiary," adds Livnat. "Customers seem to prefer this shared service approach. They just log into a central hub via the Web. They can take advantage of off peak capacity while retaining the option to access faster delivery speeds at a premium price when needed," he adds.

A wide variety of customers use Gilat/Spacenet networks for content distribution applications ranging from simple file distribution to advanced CDN-type architectures. For example, energy provider Southern States utilizes its Spacenet network to run the popular Centra distance learning system for simultaneous multiple site distribution.

Fortune 100 grocery and retail giant Kroger uses Spacenet equipment to power an advanced distance learning network using the Convergent system. It is scalable across thousands of locations and capable of providing rich-media experiences and full interactivity.

In another example, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) uses its Spacenet network for a variety of multicast content distribution applications. The delivery mechanism of Spacenet networks allows the USPS to distribute software images and pricing/tariff data files to its electronic cash registers at thousands of nationwide offices. This VSAT network also supports the efficient and timely distribution of a 9 GB national network database sent weekly to large postal centers.

Cost Effective, Yet Transparent

In a global market where the vast majority of customers no longer care about technologies, data broadcasting needs to be a cost effective, powerful and transparent component of a highly flexible content delivery solution. Legacy data is out there, but when you are talking about new business, almost all the arrows point to the realm of IP data, where edge servers and Gigabit Ethernet routers purr quietly in the corner and where integration into the Web is not an option, but a necessity.

Offering Customers More Control

The data broadcasting world is being transformed by the lowering of prices in the broadband sector, as well as the rapid advances in the digital broadcasting arena. Both are converging quickly, and one change that is very evident at both ends of the pipe is the amount of control that the customer now has on the distribution of content, including data broadcasting.

"If we are talking toolsets, take a close look at what companies are offering today like Skystream Networks with its zBand file delivery module, Helius with its Mediawrite product or Mainstream Data, to name just three," says Jonathan Feldman, senior vice president of broadcast services at Globecast America in Los Angeles. "The customer now has the ability to control the scheduling of the delivery process–what gets delivered when and to whom. Much of this control is Web-enabled through secure Internet access and can therefore be controlled remotely."

These equipment advancements are also changing the cost structure. "Pricing models are changing as well. With IP distribution, we are migrating to a pricing structure built around how much content or data is flowing on a cost per MB basis," he adds.

While the older total time used model is not yet obsolete, Feldman seems to imply that companies that quickly adapt to this new way of doing business are more likely to survive in the long run. "As we bring more IP-enabled edge devices into the mix as opposed to the standard IRDs, the whole process of taking in DVB video and pushing out IP- encoded signals to the desktop is becoming more commonplace," Feldman says. "This is enabling a new BTV paradigm whereby the customer can easily layer many different applications onto an IP-based training network."

Some readers may find it difficult to envision an integrated approach, for example, including distance learning as a single component in a unified, multi-purpose datastream, but this is all part of the convergence we mentioned earlier. "We are looking at solutions as part of a two-way model where we can offer both the standard push or data broadcasting type of service in a star/TDMA configuration along with a switched DAMA suite of services with full mesh capabilities from a single box," says Feldman.

"Among other things, it can dynamically recognize and prioritize a videoconference session in progress, for example, and then it will automatically dump circuits back into the frequency pool for use by other end users at the appropriate time."

Embracing a single or IP datastream approach when it comes to all of the information needs of a specific company across multiple sites may seem like a pipe dream. All the necessary pieces, however, are rapidly falling into place to make this a reality.

"It is just increasingly difficult today to differentiate between the different types of data being broadcast. Besides, the old system that sustained the one-way push model of content distribution in broadcasting can be easily upgraded in a cost efficient manner," says Feldman. "We are adding a new layer of flexibility here. Can we make additional subtle changes to the push model based on a growing role for requested data which can be beamed out even on an opportunistic basis, for example? Thanks to new feature-rich IP applications such as remote scheduling control through secure Web access, this is an attractive outcome which is becoming more feasible."

Peter J. Brown is Via Satellite’s Senior Multimedia & Homeland Security Editor. He lives on Mount Desert Island, ME.