Leading US cable television companies have agreed with equipment manufacturers on a set of common standards. The companies include the Executive Committee of Cable Television Laboratories Inc, CableLabs, the cable television industry’s research and development consortium. Among the companies represented were CableLabs; cable television companies Comcast Corp, Cox Cable Communications, Tele-Communications Inc, Time Warner Inc’s Time Warner Cable, Rogers Cablesystems Ltd and Continental Cablevision; and many equipment manufacturers. Several interfaces are within weeks of being specified, says the consortium. One is the connection between the cable television modem and the computer, which will be 10Base-T. In addition, the link between cable networks and the next level of wider area networks is close to being identified. This connection is most likely to be the Internet Protocol, running over Asynchronous Transfer Mode, FDDI or either of the Digital Service 3 or Optical Carrier 1 protocols. Several system-level interfaces within the cable network will also be specified in order to ensure interoperability of such important functions as authentication for log-in and log-out, self-installation of cable modems for easy andreliable customer activation, and some spectrum management over the cable network’s hybrid fibre and coaxial plant.
