Intelligent Grouping & Resource Sharing protocol (IGRS) was constituted by IGRS Working Group since July, 2003. IGRS version 1.0 was approved as China national industrial recommended standard in June, 2005, and became the first national standard in China’s 3C-Convergence industry.
Besides, all kinds of development tools and testing authentication tools based on IGRS standard have been accomplished and are gradually perfecting and updating. As required by MIIT (the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology- formerly the Ministry Of Information Industry) Science & Technology Department and led by MIIT Electronic Standardization Institute Information Product Standard Compliance Certification Test Center, all IGRS Working Group (WG) members participated in the one and a half years’ R&D of IGRS Standard Compliance Test System, and on August 30th, 2005, this IGRS Standard Compliance Test System finally passed the expert authentication organized by MIIT. IGRS WG and IGRS Engineering Lab had accomplished NDRC (the National Development and Reform Commission)’s important projects such as “Information Equipment Resource Sharing Compliance Service” standard R&D and constitution, and has the ability to conduct high-standard scientific research and project management.
IGRS Alliance have being promoting international standardization activities from the beginning. After working more than 9 years, all seven standards of IGRS V1.0 have been published as international standards by ISO/IEC. This is a great achievement for Chinese IT industry. This is also a great contribution to international standardization. The seven standards are listed as below:
ISO/IEC 14543-5-1: Information technology -- Home electronic system (HES) architecture -- Part 5-1: Intelligent grouping and resource sharing for Class 2 and Class 3 -- Core protocol
ISO/IEC 14543-5-21: Information technology -- Home electronic system (HES) architecture -- Part 5-21: Intelligent grouping and resource sharing for HES Class 2 and Class 3 -- Application profile -- AV profile
ISO/IEC 14543-5-22: Information technology -- Home electronic system (HES) architecture -- Part 5-22: Intelligent grouping and resource sharing for HES Class 2 and Class 3 -- Application profile -- File profile
ISO/IEC 14543-5-3: Information technology -- Home electronic system (HES) architecture -- Part 5-3: Intelligent grouping and resource sharing for HES Class 2 and Class 3 -- Basic application
ISO/IEC 14543-5-4: Information technology -- Home electronic system (HES) architecture -- Part 5-4: Intelligent grouping and resource sharing for HES Class 2 and Class 3 -- Device validation
ISO/IEC 14543-5-5: Information technology -- Home electronic system (HES) architecture -- Part 5-5: Intelligent grouping and resource sharing for HES Class 2 and Class 3 -- Device type
ISO/IEC 14543-5-6: Information technology -- Home electronic system (HES) architecture -- Intelligent grouping and resource sharing for HES Class 2 and Class 3 -- Part 5-6: Service type
Figure 1`: IGRS V1.0 Standard Stack Architecture
Figure 1 shows the architecture of IGRSV 1.0 protocol’s protocol stack. The top layer is about applications of diversified users. By services provided by IGRS protocol and customer description specification, these applications can be ported on IGRS devices and become IGRS services and customers. Application profiles are groups of services and users, which support a specific application, and a specific application profile provides a closer and more sufficient development support for a specific application. Service and application on IGRS devices collaborate with service and application on other IGRS devices through lower five layer IGRS standard protocols, including discovering and operating each other. The bottom layer routing protocol provides a transmission mechanism for upper interactive messages. The transportation of messages is based on existent transport protocols.
IGRS Device is a kind of abstract of various information terminal units in the real world, and IGRS device is the container and manager of its sharing resources. Through the interaction of IGRS protocol stack API and resource sharing explorer, application program realizes operation and management of the sharing resources in the IGRS network.
The sharing resources to which IGRS devices are applied can be categorized into two kinds. The resources of the first kind are owned by the devices, such as computing resources, storage resources, etc. This kind of resources are managed by resource sharing explorer as service object in IGRS devices; the resources of the other kind are services developed by application developer and provided to other applications, such as media player service, document printing service, etc. This kind of resources is managed by the sharing resource explorer in the form of service root among IGRS devices.
We need to use application program of sharing resources in IGRS devices to accept management of sharing explorer in the form of client agent, while using API provided by explorer to operate and manage sharing resources in IGRS devices. Sharing explorers on different IGRS devices provide functions of device access and control, service access and control, service data distribution, issue subscription and notification through universal IGRS device collaborative interaction protocols. The protocols have nothing to do with material network transportation protocol.
As IGRS v 1.0 is designed to operate in home area network from the beginning, transmission mechanisms such as multicasting, broadcasting are adopted in core protocol stack. These transmission mechanisms are not suitable to wide area networks. However, as the development of internet and mobile devices, more and more requirements to providing IGRS services in Internet are proposed. Customers require that wherever and whenever they are, they can access IGRS networks and enjoy IGRS device interconnection, collaboration and resource sharing by internet. These requirements have exceeded the limitation of home local area network and the IGRS v 1.0 protocols cannot satisfy these requirements any more.
To solve this problem, IGRS v 2.0 is proposed based on IGRS v 1.0 protocols. IGRS v 2.0 application scenarios are shown in Figure 2. In IGRS v 2.0, IGRS collaborative scenarios are extended from home and office to mobile and remote access, from LAN application to Internet and mobile network applications. IGRS v 2.0 will focus on “How to make the device interconnection much more easily”. By IGRS v 2.0, all devices with internet connection can access IGRS network seamlessly and IGRS services can be extended to WAN.
Figure 2: IGRS v 2.0 Application Scenarios
As collaborative service protocols, IGRS2.0 can be used when devices need exchange messages and data with each other. At this time, core functionalities and characteristics of IGRS v 2.0 protocols are:
1. Add “user” concept. Globally manage interactive and interconnectivity relationships between “User-Device”, “Device-Device” and “User-User”.
2. Provide user/device online status query and notification mechanisms to automatically discover and interact with devices.
3. Break through restrictions of private address. “Push” messages and resources to IGRS 2.0 devices behind NAT (Network Address Translation) devices.
4. Provide multiple message interaction modes, i.e. point-to-point, point-to-multiple- point, offline storage, online storage, etc.
5. By formulate an IGRS application layer uniformed primitives, different applications of different providers can interconnect and interact with each other. Additionally, extent application message interface will be provided to application providers to self-define interaction messages on IGRS 2.0 protocol stack.
In the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC25 plenary meeting which is hosted in September, 2012, IGRS Alliance proposed a PWI (Previous Working Item) about IGRS v 2.0. After discussion of all the experts of ISO/IEC JTC1 SC25 WG1, the secretariat of SC25 agreed this PWI. This is a good start for IGRS v 2.0 standardization activities. IGRS standard working group is promoting the standardization activities of IGRS v 2.0 together with all members of IGRS Alliance. We expect your attention of our newest progress.