Leading ITU specification language delivers major advances
New version of ASN.1 incorporated in biometrics and banking standards

Geneva, 25 April 2003 — The latest version of industry shaping specification language Abstract Syntax Notation 1 (ASN.1) has now been released by ITU. One of the first areas to benefit is biometrics, the practice of verifying identity based on physiological or behavioural characteristics, such as fingerprints, handwriting or retinal scans. ASN. 1 is also increasingly being used outside the telecommunication industry in areas such as security, transportation, banking or genetic research.

Ratified as a standard in 1984, it is used within the signalling system (SS7) for most telephone calls, package tracking, credit card verification and digital certificates and in many of the most used software programs. It is also widely deployed by electrical utilities to remotely control substations. Every time that you place an 800-number call, messages that are described by ASN.1 are exchanged between the switching machine and the network database to route the call to the correct common carrier and local phone number to which the 800-number maps. And when supplementary services are used, such as reverse charging, closed user groups, and international calling card verification, the messages are encoded using ASN.1.

The new ASN.1 encoding rules have already been implemented in the OASIS XML Common Biometrics Format (XCBF). XCBF will enable mobile phones, for instance, to access databases through the Web, which will make verification faster and more accurate. American standards body ANSI has also said that it will incorporate the new features into its X9.84 banking standard.

Updates in the new version of ASN.1 include enhanced Extensible Markup Language (XML) support and a new feature — Encoding Control Notation (ECN) — allowing greater compatibility with legacy protocols.

The enhanced interworking capability with XML brings ASN.1 into the age of digital communication by allowing interoperability between computing platforms sharing XML. XML is used to describe information for the database of a web page, so for instance if you have a car for sale on a web page, it can be tagged using XML and so can be found by search engines as ‘car for sale’. Increasingly, XML is used to power information appliances from cell phones to wireless personal organizers. However, XML is seen as verbose. Using ASN.1 alongside XML provides the means for these devices to talk to each other in a more compact form.

Encoding Control Notation (ECN), allows ASN.1 to be applied to legacy protocols. ECN has attracted the attention of other standards groups including Hiperlan, wanting to take advantage of the feature to retain compatibility with old specifications.

"ASN.1 has a strong installed base, and it is constantly evolving to meet industry demands. We are seeing increased interest from many new industry sectors. And the adoption of ASN.1 in biometrics standards and mobile applications is strong evidence of the value of our work," says Professor John Larmouth, ITU-T Rapporteur of Study Group 17.

For more information on ASN.1 click here

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