2. Background: Commonly-Used Host Name

INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATION FOCUS GROUP ON IPTV UNION TELECOMMUNICATION FG IPTV-C-0589 STANDARDIZATION SECTOR STUDY PERIOD 2005-2008 English only

WG(s): 6 4th FG IPTV meeting : Bled, Slovenia, 7-11 May 2007 CONTRIBUTION Source: Korea (Republic of) Title: Requirements for web-based EPG

1. Introduction There are a great number of possible IPTV service providers among the WEB portal providers. The WEB portal providers are expected to supply the IPTV services through the web-based EPG. This contribution proposes a requirement of the web-based EPG to set each host-name of the first EPG page server as “IPTV”.

2. Background: commonly-used host name Generally, a service-providing server has its unique IP address and the equivalent name known as FQDN (fully qualified domain name). The FQDN is composed of the host-name and the domain- name. For example, in case of “www.abc.com”, “www” stands for the host-name and “abc.com” stands for the domain-name. For each client’s request, the FQDN is translated into an IP address by domain name servers. There are commonly-used host-names in the internet world like the followings. - Host-name: “www” (refer to Fig. 1) When the client enters “www.abc.com”, the “www” corresponds to the host-name and the “abc.com” corresponds to the domain-name. With the host-name of “www”, the client simply identifies the location of the first WEB page supplied by the WEB portal providers. The unified host-name of the first WEB page server enables the client to access easily the first WEB page of the arbitrary WEB portals. Ex) yahoo.com  www.yahoo.com, google.com  www.google.com

Contact: ByungTak Lee (ETRI) Tel: +82-62-970-6624 Korea (Republic of) Fax: +82-62-970-6989 Email [email protected] Contact: Seung Hun Oh (ETRI) Tel: +82-62-970-6655 Korea (Republic of) Fax: +82-62-970-6989 Email [email protected] Contact: Ho Young Song (ETRI) Tel: +82-62-970-6710 Korea (Republic of) Fax: +82-62-970-6989 Email: [email protected]

Attention: This is a document submitted to the work of ITU-T and is intended for use by the participants to the activities of ITU-T's Focus Group on IPTV, and their respective staff and collaborators in their ITU-related work. It is made publicly available for information purposes but shall not be redistributed without the prior written consent of ITU. Copyright on this document is owned by the author, unless otherwise mentioned. This document is not an ITU-T Recommendation, an ITU publication, or part thereof. - 2 - FG IPTV-C-0589

- Host-name: “mail” (refer to Fig. 1) When the client enters “ mail .abc.com”, the “mail” corresponds to the host-name and the “abc.com” corresponds to the domain-name. With the host-name of “mail”, the client simply identifies the location of the first WEB-mail page supplied by the WEB-mail portal providers. The unified host-name of the first WEB-mail page server enables the client to access easily the first WEB-mail page of the arbitrary WEB-mail portals. Ex) yahoo.com  mail.yahoo.com, google.com  mail.google.com

IPTV service provider (ex. domain name: abc.com)

Client terminal Primary EPG Server WEB server (the first EPG page) Web browser

mail server Client terminal www.abc.com iptv.abc.com Web browser REDIRECTION mail.abc.com Secondary EPG Server Client terminal

Web browser epg.abc.com

Fig. 1. Commonly-used host-name (ex. domain name: abc.com)

3. Proposal: unified host-name of “IPTV” There are a great number of possible IPTV service providers among the WEB portal providers. The WEB portal providers are expected to supply the IPTV services through the web-based EPG. A method is required for the client to access easily the first EPG page of the arbitrary IPTV service providers. When the host-name of the first EPG page server is unified, it is greatly helpful for the client to identify simply the location of the first EPG page. We propose that the host-name of the first EPG page server shall be the “IPTV”. The host-name of “IPTV” composes the FQDN by adding the domain name of the arbitrary IPTV service providers. Throughout this ITU-T IPTV FG recommendation, the host-name of “IPTV” can become the commonly-used host-name for the first EPG page server.

The benefits of this unified host-name are as the followings. - In the client’s viewpoint : - 3 - FG IPTV-C-0589

When the client wants to access the first EPG page provided by the arbitrary IPTV service providers, he simply identify the FQDN with the “IPTV” host-name plus the domain name like Fig. 1. Ex) yahoo.com  iptv.yahoo.com, google.com  iptv.google.com

- In the service provider’s viewpoint : Each client is expected to access EPG web-page through the server named as “IPTV”. So, the IPTV service provider can provide various IPTV services linked in this EPG page. Also, this unified host-name helps the metadata search engine to examine efficiently the keywords inside the EPG web-page. When the service providers want to use another host-name as the EPG web-page, the REDIRECTION technology can be used. The REDIRECTION technology is commonly deployed in many WEB portals and is depicted as the primary and secondary EPG server in Fig. 1.

Also, we think that the naming of “IPTV” can be easily penetrated into the clients more than “EPG”, “ECG”, etc. So, the host-name of “IPTV” is recommended.

4. References [1] Domain Names - Concepts and Facilities (RFC 1034) [2] Domain Names - Implementation and Specification (RFC 1035)

______

Proposal

This contribution proposes following text to be inserted as section 6. Requirements for Middleware and Application Platforms document

Requirements for web-based EPG

 Host-name of EPG server: The host-name of the first EPG page server shall be “IPTV” to identify simply the fully qualified domain name of the arbitrary IPTV service providers.

______