ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector	                       Document AVC-1149
Study Group 16 						              18 February 1997
Former Q.2&3/15 Rapporteur Meeting
Boston, 18 - 21 February 1997 

SOURCE:	Japan
TITLE:		Comments on Working Draft H.321/Annex A
PURPOSE:	Discussion
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1.  Introduction
This contribution includes a few replies to the editor's comments and two editorial comments on the Working draft of Annex A of H.321[1] in order to accelerate the discussion toward the determination of the draft.
Since the market need for supporting H.320 on top of AAL5 is expected, H.321/AnnexA should be finalized timely on the scheduled deadline,  i.e. ‘97/03 determination, as a short term solution to promote ATM in business environments.
But the Recommendation H.321/AnnexA should also be in harmony with other specification,  e.g. 64kbps circuit emulation service over AAL5 is now under discussion as a part of Voice and Telephony over ATM to the Desktop Specification in ATM Forum.  One way to achieve this would be to define the network adaptation part of H.321/AnnexA specifications as a separable (replaceable?) unit.

2. Replies to the editor comments
2.1 Switching between independent and slave clocks
At Boulder meeting, the indication of independent/slave clock source was recognized as necessary and it should be through the outband signaling[2].   For the H.321 AnnexA terminal, remote end terminals can be classified into the following three types:
•	AnnexA terminal in the same or different private/customer premises network
•	H.320 terminal communicating via H.320/H.321annexA gateway
•	H.321 terminal on public B-ISDN communicating via AAL1/AAL5 interworking unit: there is no explicit description on the transmission clock generation in the Recommendation H.321. There may be a hypothesis that H.321 terminal shall have slave source clock generation capability to communicate with H.320 terminal in N-ISDN in addition to network clock based source clock generation capability. 
In the case of two H.321 terminal communication, source clock frequency recovery method “null” of AAL parameters Information Element  in Q.2931 SETUP message indicates that the transmission clock is generated based on common network clock. 
Since source clock frequency recovery method indication is only available in the case of using AAL1, same kind of indication is necessary for the AAL5 case.  One possible solution will be the usage of the Notification indicator information element in SETUP message.  To communicate with H.320 terminal, the H.321 AnnexA  terminal should use slave clock source by default.  When the H.321 AnnexA terminal originates a call, it shall indicate the slave clock mode (i.e. default operation mode) to the other terminal that means “I’m going to use the reproduced transmission clock which is recovered from the receiving source clock.”  When H.321 AnnexA terminal receives the above slave clock mode Notification IE,  it shall switch to use an independent clock source for the transmission.  This can avoid the clock loop problem.
In the H.320/H.321AnnexA gateway, the Notification IE to the H.321AnnexA terminal shall be “null”,  that indicates that the H.320 terminal does not use slave clock source.
In the AAL1/AAL5 interworking unit,  proper conversion between AAL parameter and Notification should be done. However, further study is necessary for the interworking with H.321 terminal in the case of the AAL parameter indication “adaptive clock method”.
This is because “adaptive clock method” only indicates that the transmission clock is not locked to the network clock, thus there is no way to know how the clock is generated.
Another further technical study on the clock stability should be needed for the case of two H.321 AnnexA communication.  In the above one way notification method, two phase-locked loops(PLLs) will be cascading, i.e. adaptive clock recovery will be done at a receiver side, and the recovered clock will be used for the transmission clock source, then another adaptive clock recovery will be done at the other end.  If independent clock source is more preferable, Notification IE can be transferred in the both directions, e.g. SETUP and SETUP ACKNOWLEDGE.

Note 1:  In multipoint communications,  H.321 AnnexA terminal should also use slave clock source.
Note 2: Two bit indication of network based source clock (network synchronous), independent source clock (free run) or slave source clock (reproduced from receiver side) might be more general solution.

2.2 Packetization of multichannel H.221 octets over a single VC
Same as Mike Nilsson's comment, each CPCS-SDU shall begin with the first channel's octet.  That means the size of each CPCS-SDU should be a multiple of the N in N*64kbps.

2.3 Broadband Bearer Capability and ATM Transfer Capability
Broadband Transfer Capability in Broadband Bearer Capability shall be replaced with ATM Transfer Capability "ATC5", if the CBR operation in BCOB-X is requested.  According to draft new ITU-T Recommendation Q.2961.2, draft amendment to ITU-T Recommendation Q.2931[4], and ITU-T Recommendation I.371, ATM transfer capability value of SBR2, SBR3, ATC5, ATC9 or ATC10 is only valid for BCOB-X.

3. Editorial comments
1.	In Figure 1/AnnexA/H.321, H.321/H.320 Gateway will be replaced with H.321AnnexA/H.320 Gateway. H.321/H.320 Gateway may mislead the reader that the gateway is nothing but the interworking unit defined by I.580.
2.	In Table 2/Annex A/H.321, the Q.2931 IE of Broadband Low Layer information (B-LLI) should be removed. 

References
[1] Corey Gates, “Working Draft H.321/Annex A”, Version 0.1, 16 January, 1997
[2] 	AVC-1099, "Report of the Boulder meeting", 20 December, 1996
[3] 	AVC-1067, “H.320 over AAL5”,  10 December, 1996
[4] COM 11-R 185-E, "Report on the meeting held in Miyazaki, Japan, from 29 January to 16 February 1996 -- Part II.40 - Draft amendment to ITU-T Recommendation Q.2931: B-ISDN - DSS 2 - User Network Interface Layer 3 Specification for Basic Call/Connection Broadband-Integrated Services Digital Network (B-ISDN). Digital Subscriber Signaling System No.2(DDS 2). ATM Transfer Capability Coding in the Broadband Bearer Capability Information Element.", April 1996