Generic Stream Encapsulation

Generic Stream Encapsulation, or GSE for short, is a data link layer protocol defined by DVB. GSE provides means to carry packet oriented protocols such as IP on top of uni-directional physical layers such as DVB-S2, DVB-T2 and DVB-C2.

GSE provides additional features beyond the pure carriage of IP datagrams that increase the protocol flexibility and applicability. Some key GSE functions/characteristics are:

• Support for multi-protocol encapsulation (IPv4, IPv6, MPEG, ATM, Ethernet, 802.1pQVLANs, etc.)
• Transparency to network layer functions, including IPencryption and .
• Support of several addressing modes. In addition to the 6-byte MAC address (including multicast and unicast), it supports a MAC address-less mode, and an optional 3-byte address mode.
• A mechanism for fragmenting IPdatagrams or other network layerpackets over Base Band frames to support ACM/VCM.
• Support for hardware filtering.
• Extensibility: additional link protocols can be included through specific protocol type values (e.g. Layer 2 security, IP Header Compression, etc.).