THE NUMBER OF HOUSEHOLDS USING WI-FI for home networking has surpassed the number using Ethernet, according to a recent survey by Parks Associates. Of course, Ethernet and Wi-Fi are just two of a handful of in-home networking technologies being discussed or deployed. Others include HomePlug, HomePNA and Multimedia over Coax, whose backers are working to get a foot in the door.
Wi-Fi
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U.S. and canadian home networks |
While critics note that Wi-Fi today is used primarily for data transmission, is unreliable, has limited reach and doesn’t include quality of service mechanisms, various vendors at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year in Las Vegas unveiled Wi-Fi-related products with broader reach, many based on MIMO (multiple-input/multiple-output) technology, and the ability to support multimedia services.
For example, NETGEAR introduced a new router called RangeMax with an antenna technology that dynamically adapts to changes in the environment to achieve better coverage. RangeMax’s seven antennas offer 127 possible permutations for how to send a signal and constantly are assessing the best scenario, says David James, director of broadband services products at NETGEAR, adding that that enables quality of service for Wi-Fi. The product, which is expected to be available commercially this month, does that by detecting if a physical barrier comes into view and working around it.
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Meanwhile, U.S. Robotics showed its new wireless MAXg product family, which it says offers up to 50 percent greater range and 40 percent faster throughput than standard 802.11g products. “For the first time, users can expect secure, whole home or office coverage from the MAXg product line compared to other 802.11g devices on the market today,” says Jim Thomsen, senior product manager at U.S. Robotics. “Where standard 802.11g devices typically operate up to 150 feet indoors, MAXg is capable of delivering an extended range up to 225 feet and maintaining faster wireless connections at greater distances in typical home and small business environments. This eliminates many so called ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ spot issues.”
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. spotlighted at CES what it calls “the first wireless AV entertainment local area network.” HiWAVE (high-throughput wireless AV entertainment) delivers distortion-free connectivity over a 20-meter range, according to Samsung. The MIMO-based HiWAVE solution eliminates channel distortion and interference, enabling network devices to transmit data streams reliably over great distances. As a result, users can share broadband connections of up to 60mbps between consumer electronics devices supporting a range of new applications such as live broadcasting and room-to-room streaming services.
And Belkin Corp. has a new Wireless A+G networking line including a router, notebook network card, desktop network card and USB network adapter that are compatible with all the 802.11 standards and operate in both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands to allow people to segment their wireless home networks for improved performance and reliability. People can stream photos, movies and music over the 5GHz 802.11a network without being affected by 2.4GHz devices such as microwave ovens, cordless phones, and 802.11b and 802.11g networks, according to Belkin.
HomePlug
Another in-home networking option that has seen some success is HomePlug.
HomePlug started out in 2000 as a global alliance effort for developing in-home powerline standards, says Cameron McCaskill, vice president of business development for Intellon Corp., an integrated circuit provider. Today, there are more than 2 million HomePlug units deployed in North America, Europe and, to a lesser extent, Asia. According to Park Associates, sales of powerline home networking products and solutions will grow from 2.7 million in 2004 to 9.6 million in 2008.
While there were interference concerns early on about HomePlug technology — which networks equipment via in-home electrical wires — McCaskill says interference from home appliances like hair dryers is not a problem for HomePlug at this point. That’s because HomePlug operates in the 4 to 21.5MHz frequency band, which is not affected heavily by other home appliances. Also, he adds, HomePlug has 78 “carriers,” so if noise is affecting some of the carriers on the frequency, HomePlug automatically checks for other channels that are not getting the noise and redirects traffic to other channels.
“The gold standard is certainly Ethernet — running Cat5 everywhere in your house,” McCaskill says. “Wi-Fi is popular, but there’s variability in whole-house coverage. HomePlug, meanwhile, has been tested to reach 99 percent-plus of home outlets.”
Companies including Belkin, D-Link Systems Inc., Linksys, Siemens and SMC Networks sell HomePlug adapters embedded with Intellon chips. Those adapters plug into the Ethernet ports of consumer electrics equipment at one end and a standard power outlet on the other end.
While these adapters are sold primarily through retail channels, McCaskill says several service providers including America Online Inc., BellSouth Corp., Comcast Corp., Cox Communications Inc., Deutsche Telekom, EarthLink Inc., EchoStar Satellite LLC and France Telecom have been involved in forwarding the HomePlug technology. Several of these service providers sell the HomePlug adapters through the online stores where they sell their broadband services, he says.
When a customer complains that their Wi-Fi network offers limited reach, he adds, Bell- South will ship that customer a HomePlug adapter “to fill the dead spot,” explains McCaskill. And in January, Asoka USA Corp. announced a licensing relationship with BellSouth to offer BellSouth-branded home networking equipment nationwide. The companies will offer HomePlug-certified Powerline Network Technology through a variety of retail outlets beginning in mid-2005. “Increasingly, residential customers are sharing a broadband connection to create a networked home capable of sharing content among multiple devices,” says Eddie Shaw, director of DSL operations for BellSouth. “BellSouth’s relationship with Asoka provides an additional approach to home networking using HomePlug Powerline Network Technology. This ability to send data over electrical wiring, in addition to BellSouth’s wireless networking option, allows customers to choose the best networking solution for their particular application.”
Meanwhile, Comcast, which joined the HomePlug board of directors in 2003, uses HomePlug technology rather than drilling new jacks and pulling new coax into a home so the service can reach any PC in the home.
“You’d be surprised how many repeat calls service providers get when people want to install PCs in additional rooms,” McCaskill says. “But a HomePlug adapter eliminates that problem, so you have location independence.” Clearly, Comcast isn’t the only cable company interested in HomePlug, given that Cable- Labs in December put out a request for proposals defining three home gateway platforms for 2005, says McCaskill. One is a gateway with embedded Wi-Fi technology, and some vendors already have products for that; the second is a HomePlug-only gateway; and the third involves both HomePlug and Wi-Fi in the same box, he says.
Although it’s not available commercially yet, EchoStar’s DISH Network at CES demonstrated a new set-top box with built-in HomePlug capabilities. Today, a customer needs a telephone jack handy to every DISH set-top box, McCaskill explains, but this new HomePlugenabled device instead allows the set-top boxes to plug into a power outlet to send pay-per-view commands to the dish outside the home. “It’s not necessarily video distribution,” he adds, “but it could be used for that in the future.”
EchoStar, which offers radio programming through a deal with satellite radio company SIRIUS, at CES also showed how HomePlug-enabled boom boxes could plug into any home outlet for connectivity to the dish on the user’s home.
Currently, HomePlug certified technology — known as HomePlug 1.0 — supports up to 14mbps and extends over 1,000 meters. But the HomePlug Powerline Alliance in late January was finalizing work on a newer version of HomePlug, called HomePlug AV, which will offer up to 200mbps of capacity, says McCaskill. That means HomePlug AV will be able to support multiple high-definition TVs in the home and be available for various other applications as well, he says. HomePlug AV also includes eight levels of traffic prioritization to deliver quality of service; hardware-level encryption; and more.
Samsung at CES staged a demonstration using a pre-standard version of Intellon’s HomePlug AV powerline technology together with Freescale Semiconductor Inc.’s Ultra-Wideband (UWB) wireless technology to distribute multiple high-definition content streams throughout the home.
HomePNA
Home phoneline networking, or HomePNA, is an in-home networking technology that has been batted around the industry in the past few years.
The Home Phoneline Networking Alliance finalized the most recent version of the technology — HomePNA 3.0 — back in June 2003. HomePNA 3.0 has a MAC data rate of 128mbps with optional extensions reaching up to 240mbps. The technology works over existing home telephone or coax wiring, includes quality of service mechanisms and handles voice, video and data services. Earlier versions of HomePNA are ITU standards, and HomePNA 3.0 is expected to be added as an ITU standard shortly.
Despite the numbers being thrown around, HomePNA 3.0 has a very high actual user experience bandwidth, says Rich Nesin, president of Home Phoneline Networking Alliance and vice president of marketing at semiconductor company CopperGate Communications. While others in the in-home networking realm say the bandwidth their technologies offer is higher than HomePNA’s 128mbps, Nesin says those rates are MAC numbers, while HomePNA “can offer 90 percent of its PHY rate, which is much higher than anyone else.”
Among the companies in the Home Phoneline Networking Alliance are 2Wire Inc. and Motorola, says Nesin. He adds that the alliance soon will launch a membership drive.
Corinex Communications Corp. now offers a bridge product supporting HomePNA; OSI Systems Inc. has an optical network terminal with HomePNA; and there are seven vendors developing products based on the CopperGate solution, continues Nesin. “The CopperGate product is in production now, so people are showing production samples, and no one else [in home-networking] is that far along,” Nesin says.
While other in-home technologies have targeted retail channels, Nesin says HomePNA is focused initially on service providers. “Service providers are pretty much demanding wired, because wireless is great, but it’s really not that reliable,” says Nesin. “We’re talking about multimedia here.” TELUS of Canada plans to do a trial of HomePNA 3.0 related to its IPTV service later this year, according to Nesin.
Intellon’s McCaskill calls HomePNA “a pretty good solution,” but notes that homes obviously have far fewer phone jacks than they do electrical outlets. According to McCaskill, one of the major U.S. telcos at one point did an HPNA and HomePlug 20-home comparison. He says the telco got connections in 100 percent of the electrical jacks for HomePlug, and only 80 percent of phone jacks worked for HPNA.
Although it would seem that the DSL Forum might be pushing HPNA, given that both DSL and HPNA use existing telephone wiring, the DSL Forum is not backing any particular home network technology. Instead, the forum has an initiative called “DSL Home” that includes automatic service configuration for service providers on the WAN side and universal plug-and-play capability for multiple technologies on the LAN side, explains George Dobrowski, who is on the DSL Forum’s board of directors and works for Conexant Systems Inc. as the director of technology and product planning.
“We picked protocols so you can use Wi-Fi, HomePlug, HPNA, Ethernet — which is on all routers — a PCI or a USB interface,” Dobrowski says. “DSL Home supports all that. MoCA is a brand new thing, but that also could be supported by the DSL Home system, which has mechanisms to support various LAN-side interfaces.”
MoCA
Multimedia over Coax, or MoCA, first was announced publicly a little more than a year ago. This technology out of the Multimedia over Coax Alliance uses the coaxial cable running through the walls of residential buildings to facilitate in-home networking.
Founding members of MoCA include Cisco Systems Inc., Comcast, Entropic Communications Inc., EchoStar, Motorola, Panasonic, RadioShack Corp. and Toshiba America Inc.
The benefits of MoCA, for which commercial equipment is expected to be available later this year, include the high bandwidth it promises, which will allow it to support full digital networks with HD video and data; the security of coax; and the fact that coax has long been used to carry video, say proponents.
While the 802.11g version of Wi-Fi offers 54mbps bandwidth, coax with MoCA will deliver 270mbps, says Eric Buffkin, chair of the marketing work group for MoCA.
Buffkin told xchange in January that the alliance had been doing field tests over the past six months and was working on vendor product certification. The alliance expects to release the MoCA specification at the end of this quarter. “We’ve tested MoCA in more than 200 homes,” he says, adding that MoCA can allow DVR to be available to any device in the home.
MoCA chips are expected to be available from Entropic in high volumes in 2006 for less than $10, according to Buffkin. Companies planning to certify products as MoCA-compliant include Avtrex Inc., D-Link, Entropic, Motorola, Panasonic, Sigma Designs Inc., Thomson Corp., Ucentric Systems Inc. and Zoran Corp.
They say the first MoCA products will be adapters that sit next to DVDs, but shortly after that, MoCA technology will be embedded into devices such as set-top boxes.
While MoCA seems an obvious match for cable TV companies, which use coax to deliver both TV and data services today, telephone companies are interested in the technology too, says Ladd Wardani, president of MoCA. “Telcos may be the very first operators to deploy [MoCA],” says Wardani, noting that Motorola is involved in the MoCA effort. (Verizon Communications Inc. last year signed a multiyear contract with Motorola, which will outfit it with video network infrastructure and customer premises equipment related to Verizon’s launch of video services on the company’s new FTTP network this year.)
Buffkin adds that “even Qwest [Communications International Inc.] with its VDSL service in Phoenix used coax once the signal got in the house.”
| Links |
| 2Wire Inc. www.2wire.com America Online Inc. www.aol.com Asoka USA Corp. www.asokausa.com Avtrex Inc. www.avtrex.com BellSouth Corp. www.bellsouth.com Belkin Corp. www.belkin.com CableLabs www.cablelabs.com Cisco Systems Inc. www.cisco.com Comcast Corp. www.comcast.com Conexant Systems Inc. www.conexant.com CopperGate Communications www.copper-gate.com Corinex Communications Corp. www.corinex.com Cox Communications Inc. www.cox.com D-Link Systems Inc. www.dlink.com Deutsche Telekom www.telekom3.de/en-p/home/cc-startseite.html DSL Forum www.dslforum.org EarthLink Inc. www.earthlink.net EchoStar Satellite LLC www.dishnetwork.com Entropic Communications Inc. www.entropic-communications.com France Telecom www.francetelecom.com/en Freescale Semiconductor Inc. www.freescale.com Home Phoneline Networking Alliance www.homepna.org HomePlug Powerline Alliance www.homeplug.org Intellon Corp. www.intellon.com Linksys www.linksys.com Motorola Inc. www.motorola.com Multimedia over Coax Alliance www.mocalliance.org NETGEAR www.netgear.com OSI Systems Inc. www.osi-systems.com Panasonic www.panasonic.com Parks Associates www.parksassociates.com Qwest Communications International Inc. www.qwest.com RadioShack Corp. www.radioshackcorporation.com Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. www.samsung.com Siemens www.siemens.com Sigma Designs Inc. www.sigmadesigns.com SIRIUS www.sirius.com SMC Networks Inc. www.smc.com TELUS www.telus.com Thomson Corp. www.thomson.com Toshiba America Inc. www.toshiba.com U.S. Robotics www.usr.com Ucentric Systems Inc. www.ucentric.com Verizon Communications Inc. www.verizon.com Zoran Corp. www.zoran.com |
