Connections for the Digital Age E-Book

E. Bryan Carne

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 448

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Explores and analyzes past and current technologies and trends in multimedia communication Digital natives--those persons born in the digital age--have an ever-widening range of wireless-enabled devices at their disposal. They are the drivers of multimedia communications, continually seeking out the technologies and distribution channels that best match their needs. This book outlines the changes in telecommunications that are occurring to meet these needs. It addresses the continually increasing requirement to provide connections that make the electronic encounter as natural and convenient as possible, exploring the vast assortment of devices that exist as part of everyday living for digital natives. Featuring precise diagrams and tables to illustrate the evolving environment, the book begins by describing the competitive interactions of telephone, cable TV, and cellular mobile companies in providing services and content. It outlines the creation of digital multimedia streams and how they are transported, explains what multimedia connections are available, and summarizes the activities of competitors while providing an overview of their markets and customer statistics. This book uniquely covers wireline, optical fiber, cable, and wireless access methods, explaining the coding required to create digital streams. It combines ethernet with provider bridging and multi-protocol label switching and highlights the necessity to serve legacy streams. In addition, the book addresses controversial issue: will incumbent communications providers ever overtake Internet as the chief source of digital feeds and popular contents? Featuring extensive references and a glossary of multimedia terms, Connections for the Digital Age is written for digital natives and other persons with an interest in multimedia communications; industrial, commercial, and financial managers; engineers; software professionals and Internet specialists; and students at technical schools and universities.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Preface

1 A Digital World

1.1 Digital Natives and Immigrants

1.2 Contemporary Communications

1.3 Triple-Play Services

1.4 Contemporary Facilities

1.5 Competition

1.6 The Business of Multimedia Services

1.7 Next Generation Networks

2 Signal Formats

2.1 Digital Voice

2.2 Digital Audio

2.3 Digital Pictures

2.4 Digital Video

2.5 Text

2.6 A Common Signal Format

2.7 Modulated Signals

2.8 Optical Fiber Transmission

2.9 Legacy Signal Formats

3 Frames, TCP/IP, and VoIP

3.1 OSI Client-Server Model

3.2 Internet Model

3.3 VoIP

4 Carrier Ethernet

4.1 Ethernet Operation

4.2 Quality of Service

4.3 Carrier-Grade Ethernet

4.4 Multiprotocol Label Switching

4.5 Pseudowires

5 Wire, Fiber, Cable, and Wireless Access

5.1 Digital Subscriber Lines

5.2 Optical Fiber

5.3 Cable Access

5.4 Wireless Access

6 Mobile Phones

6.1 First Generation Cellular Systems

6.2 The Air Interface

6.3 Roaming and Handover

6.4 Second Generation

6.5 Third Generation

6.6 Fourth Generation

6.7 Backhaul

6.8 Satellite Mobile Phones

6.9 Skype

7 Future Networks and Services

7.1 IPTV

7.2 Networked Home

7.3 Next Generation Networks

7.4 Omnibus Broadband Initiative

7.5 The Digital Future

Appendix A Security

A.1 Security Techniques

A.2 Cryptography

A.3 Specific Techniques

Appendix B Protocols

Abbreviations

Glossary

Index

Copyright © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Carne, E. Bryan, 1928–

 Connections for the digital age : multimedia communications for mobile, nomadic and fixed devices / E. Bryan Carne

p. cm.

 Includes index.

 ISBN 978-1-118-05416-1 (hardback)

 1. Multimedia communications. I. Title.

 TK5105.15.C37 2011

 621.3815’422–dc22

2011010941

oBook ISBN: 978-1-118-10452-1

ePDF ISBN: 978-1-118-10453-8

ePub ISBN: 978-1-118-10454-5

In loving memory

Brian J. Carne

November 20, 1958 to February 7, 2011

Preface

In the last half-century, tremendous progress has been made in all technical fields. One of the outstanding successes has been the ability to encode everything related to communications in digital symbols so that the full range of media are compatible with one another and their signals can be mixed and carried over a common network. The driving force for this convergence was provided by ARPAnet, the pioneering data network sponsored by the United States government. Now called Internet, it provides a public, worldwide network that allows users with computer-based devices to exchange digital multimedia communication.

Since about 1980, much of the developed world has used the Internet as the basis of entertainment, business, and personal services. For this reason the period from 1980 through the present is often called the “digital age,” and those fortunate to grow up in this time period are known as “digital natives.” They are persons who naturally accept cellphones, laptops, iTunes, and the Internet as normal, readily available parts of their lives. I doubt anyone in the generations before them foresaw that point-contact Germanium transistors, and stored-program computers in their air-conditioned fortresses, would lead to sticks with many gigabits of memory, to wireless and landline connections operating at speeds of several gigabits per second, to computers on a chip, to optical fiber transmission, and the capability of anyone to participate in global social networks in real time. Furthermore, television has evolved from an over-the-air, black-and-white capability to a cable network that can deliver hundreds of specialized channels and high-speed data.

The result is the availability of powerful digital devices that can be interconnected to create sophisticated combinations of various media that fulfill our needs to communicate at various levels. These include telephoning (perhaps engaging in a video chat) while moving without knowing where the called party is, various arrangements of musical devices that provide real-time or recorded reproduction, searching the Web for specific material, and three-dimensional, high-definition television extravaganzas. The book is a description of a field that is rapidly evolving to provide digital multimedia communication on demand, at any time, anywhere, to stationary, nomadic, and mobile users. As such it is but a snapshot of today’s complexities. Who knows what another decade will bring?

This book is intended for the layman who is into digital devices for multimedia entertainment or communications, and who is interested in what might be available to connect future digital devices be they mobile, nomadic, or stationary. Like any technical field, multimedia communications is built on specialized expressions. It had been my hope to define them in the paragraph in which they are used. Unfortunately, as the writing progressed this did not appear to be a very practical approach. Accordingly, they have been relegated to a substantial glossary at the end of the book. Likewise, even though they are defined in the text, there is a listing of acronyms that are used more than once to provide a ready reference to their meaning.

In writing this book I have been greatly helped by two daily newsletters that describe events in, and report numbers related to, the telecommunications world. They are available online and I heartily recommend both to those who wish to keep abreast of the field. They are

Light Reading: Published online by Techweb, a UBM Company (New York, NY), and self-described as “networking the telecom industry.” As well as discussing the general environment they devote some issues exclusively to particular topics—LR Mobile, LR Cable, LR Europe, and LR Asia. In addition they produce Heavy Reading research reports. Contact them at http://www.lightreading.com.Telegeography’s CommsUpdate: Published on-ine by Telegeography Research, a division of PriMetrica Ltd, (Exeter, UK) and self-described as the benchmark research service for the long-distance industry. Contact them at http://www.telegeography.com.

In addition, the help of the Google and Yahoo search engines was vital. Without them, it would have been impossible to find many of the references cited. Some are identified by their URLs. I know they are likely to change or disappear with time but we live in the digital age, and a few moments on your favorite search engine should suffice to obtain them, or their successors. I am aware that the numbers I quote are not necessarily consistent. For instance, the number of telephone calls, the number of mobile phones, or other such statistics depend on who counted them, and when they were counted. I suggest that the reader uses the numerical information I give as an indication of possible magnitude, and not absolute value.

Finally, and not least, I wish to thank Simone Taylor, Diana Gialo, and their colleagues at John Wiley and Sons, as well as the anonymous referees, for helping me focus on what really matters.

E. Bryan Carne

Peterborough, NH

1

A Digital World

Driven by natural inquisitiveness, and encouraged by scientific discoveries and engineering achievements, the human environment is constantly evolving. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus (c. 540–c. 470 BC) is said to have taught that there is nothing permanent except change. In social, political, and commercial affairs, change is everywhere. Change is an eternal condition of mankind, and so it is with modes of communication. Change is most obvious from generation to generation as the new generation picks up developments made by the previous one. Without personal knowledge of what went before, new generations are free to innovate and discover new uses. Certainly this is true of the current period. Within a lifetime, entire industries devoted to digital devices, such as personal computers, mobile phones, software that performs amazing feats without human intervention, and a worldwide data network that is available to anyone with a connection and a compatible terminal, have been born and are thriving. The confluence of solid state (electronic and optical) components, high-level software, and pervasive digital communications has changed the developed world so that new generations are forging a computer-enabled, data-enriched, social, industrial, and political environment.

The development of the Internet and its global reach surprised most communications experts. In the 1970s the incumbent telephone companies were more interested in voice than in data, perhaps for good reasons: they had quality of service problems. Waiting for several seconds before the overworked common equipment in the central office could return a dial tone was common, and one had to book a time for an intercontinental call. Furthermore, calling across the United States required the intervention of an operator in White Plains, Chicago, or Dallas until direct-distance dialing (DDD) could be universally instituted. All that is gone now, but, in the meantime, a facility of the United States Department of Defense (DOD) called ARPAnet (Advanced Research Projects Agency network), developed and built to share government computing resources among research establishments, grew and flourished.1 De facto it became the national data network. Government property no longer, and now called Internet, it provides digital communication capability to a global audience permitting them to send and receive multimedia messages.

ARPAnet and Internet provided platforms for the conversion of data, voice, audio, and video media2 to digital signals. This combination of media became known as multimedia and, when the signals were mixed together (multiplexed) the stream was termed broadband. It is important to realize that broadband signals are only alive as speech, music, movies, pictures, and text at their sources and when captured and interpreted by their receivers. In between they are a broadband stream of digital signals with different formats that must be treated properly in order to be moved from place to place. This advance has spawned a cornucopia of digital portable devices. Now, the once monopolistic voice and narrowband data communications establishments are working assiduously and in collaboration to provide broadband services.

Today there are at least four times as many mobile phones as landline phones. In addition, the number of Internet hosts is rapidly approaching one billion, and Internet users around two billion people. To the discomfort of existing landline telephone companies (telcos), fixed-line usage is declining, leaving them with increasing liabilities and underutilized assets. To restore their fortunes they have accepted that communications action is centered on the Internet and its vast array of sites, and they must embrace broadband digital technologies and compete with mobile cell phone companies (cellcos) and cable television companies (cablecos). But the environment is not static; cellcos are expanding wireless services so that mobile users can receive multimedia signals at greater and greater data rates from a range of sources, and cablecos have seized the opportunity to augment their traditional television entertainment businesses with high-speed Internet access and digital voice services. The goals of all of these organizations are to construct a multimedia world that will provide connections to stationary, nomadic, and mobile devices to make the electronic encounter as natural and convenient as possible. This book is a snapshot of a rapidly evolving field that seeks to provide digital multimedia communication on demand, at any time, to anywhere, using any terminal, and to compete with the attractions of the Internet.