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."
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