The Broadband Forum is a non-profit industry consortium dedicated to developing

broadband network The ideal telecommunication network has the following characteristics: broadband, ''multi-media'', ''multi-point'', ''multi-rate'' and economical implementation for a diversity of services (multi-services). The Broadband Integrated Services Digital ...

specifications. Members include telecommunications networking and service provider companies, broadband device and equipment vendors, consultants and independent testing labs (ITLs). Service provider members are primarily wire-line service providers (non-mobile)

telephone companies A telephone company, also known as a telco, telephone service provider, or telecommunications operator, is a kind of communications service provider (CSP), more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunica ...

History

The DSL Forum was founded in 1994 with about 200 member companies in different divisions of the

telecommunication Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

and

information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of Data (computing), data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information te ...

sector. It is used as a platform for companies that operate in the broadband market. Its initial main purpose was the establishment of new standards around digital subscriber line communication products such as

provisioning In telecommunication, provisioning involves the process of preparing and equipping a network to allow it to provide new services to its users. In National Security/Emergency Preparedness telecommunications services, ''"provisioning"'' equates to ...

. This cooperation has brought different standardizations for

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. ...

, SHDSL,

VDSL Very high-speed digital subscriber line (VDSL) and very high-speed digital subscriber line 2 (VDSL2) are digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies providing data transmission faster than the earlier standards of asymmetric digital subscriber li ...

ADSL2+ G.992.5 (also referred to as ADSL2+, G.dmt.bis+, and G.adslplus) is an ITU-T standard for asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) broadband Internet access. The standard has a maximum theoretical downstream sync speed of 24 megabits per second ...

and

VDSL2 Very high-speed digital subscriber line (VDSL) and very high-speed digital subscriber line 2 (VDSL2) are digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies providing data transmission faster than the earlier standards of asymmetric digital subscriber li ...

. The group was established in 1994 as the ADSL Forum, but became the DSL Forum in 1999. It was renamed after the digital subscriber line (DSL) family of technology, also known collectively as xDSL. Among its early design documents, the Forum created TR-001 (1996) system reference model, which together with later TR-012 (1999) core network architecture, recommended PPP over an ATM transport layer as the best practice for a DSL ISP. This was subsequently refined in TR-025 and TR-059. Starting in 2004, the Forum expanded its work into other last mile technologies including

optical fiber An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass ( silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a mea ...

. On 17 June 2008 it changed its name to "Broadband Forum". DSL-related specifications, while still a key part of the forum's work, are no longer its only work. For instance, the forum produced work specific to

passive optical network A passive optical network (PON) is a fiber-optic telecommunications technology for delivering broadband network access to end-customers. Its architecture implements a point-to-multipoint topology in which a single optical fiber serves multiple e ...

ing (PON). Its Auto-Configuration Server specification

TR-069 Technical Report 069 (TR-069) is a technical specification of the Broadband Forum that defines an application layer protocol for remote management and provisioning of customer-premises equipment (CPE) connected to an Internet Protocol (IP) networ ...

, originally published in 2004, was adapted for use with

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...

and

Network Attached Storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level (as opposed to block-level storage) computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. The term "NAS" can refer to both the tech ...

units. The Forum's TR-101 specification (2006) documents migration toward an

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...

-based DSL aggregation model (Ethernet

DSLAM A digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM, often pronounced ''DEE-slam'') is a network device, often located in telephone exchanges, that connects multiple customer digital subscriber line (DSL) interfaces to a high-speed digital ...

s). In May 2009, IP/MPLS Forum merged with the Broadband Forum. It had promoted the

Frame Relay Frame Relay is a standardized wide area network (WAN) technology that specifies the physical and data link layers of digital telecommunications channels using a packet switching methodology. Originally designed for transport across Integrated Se ...

and

Multiprotocol Label Switching Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) is a routing technique in telecommunications networks that directs data from one node to the next based on labels rather than network addresses. Whereas network addresses identify endpoints the labels identif ...

technologies. Technical work of IP/MPLS Forum continued in a newly created "IP/MPLS and Core" Working Group of the Broadband Forum. The historical specifications from the IP/MPLS Forum's predecessors,

ATM Forum The ATM Forum was founded in 1991 to be the industry consortium to promote Asynchronous Transfer Mode technology used in telecommunication networks; the founding president and chairman was Fred Sammartino of Sun Microsystems. It was a non-profit in ...

, Frame Relay Forum, MFA Forum, and MPLS Forum, are archived on the Broadband Forum's website, under IP/MPLS Forum specifications. Broadband Forum issued Femto Access Point Service Data Model

TR-196 TR-196 (Technical Report 196) is a Broadband Forum technical specification. Its official title is "Femto Access Point Service Data Model." The purpose of this Technical Report is to specify the Data Model for the Femto Access Point (FAP) for remo ...

during April 2009 and version 2 released during November 2011. Broadband Forum specified in TR-348 for Hybrid Access Networks an architecture that enables network operators to efficiently combine

XDSL Digital subscriber line (DSL; originally digital subscriber loop) is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric d ...

and LTE.

References

External links

* {{official website, broadband-forum.org/
Advantages Of Leased Lines Over Broadband
Technology consortia Digital subscriber line Broadband Digital television

History

See also

References

External links