The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) has been the managing partner for the Public Television (PTV) Interconnection System (s) since the early 1980’s. As part of its management responsibility, PBS investigated alternative approaches for the next iteration of the PTV interconnection service needed to replace the current network for future proofing

The v6 system implementation calls for and supports the interconnection of the current 172 Community Service Grant (CSG) PTV stations via a duplex switching IP Virtual Private Network. This network is multicast enabled and features Class of Service/Quality of Service (COS/QOS) differentiation for traffic engineering purposes. The v6 system approach also features a partial transponder satellite overlay for completeness of nationwide coverage, redundancy and fail-soft modes of operation.

V6 concept is to enable all stations in the system to share files and streams amoung eacg other as well as the national program streams and files eminating from PBS SOC1. with this mesh the programming content would be elevated to new hieghts by the sheer volume of colaboration that coul dbe accomplished.