Anticipating the emergence of the home network as the focal point of the relationship between carrier and consumer and the importance of defining and implementing standards around the management of this new crux, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) announced in January the creation of the ATIS Home Networking (HNET) Forum. HNET is the culmination of a year’s work by ATIS’ CTO-led Technology and Operations Council and its Home Networking Focus Group (FG), which conducted a home networking assessment across segments of the industry and determined there also had to be a focal point for the myriad standards work projects being done by disparate groups – 34 at last count.
Having this many groups working on standards and practices for home networking is an affirmation of the serious interest in the segment. It also poses a challenge for developers and engineers trying to keep pace with all the progress being made or to know where to address questions. The focus group marshaled the expertise of representatives from Cisco, Verizon, AT&T, Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson, Qwest, Sony, Hitachi, ADC, Corning, Haywire, Intrado, Conexant Systems and Widevine. The first meeting was convened on Feb. 3, and led by Cisco’s Gale Lightfoot.
Lightfoot is senior staff program manager in the Office of the Chief Technology Officer in Cisco’s Service Provider Group. In addition to currently being the convener of ATIS’ HNET Forum, he also recently served as co-chair of the end systems work group in the International Telecommunication Union – Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) IPTV Focus Group.
In this special for xchange, he spoke with B/OSS editor Tim McElligott about the progress the HNET Forum has made since.
TM: Has the HNET Forum been well received by the rest of the standards community?
GL: The other standards bodies recognize the need to have a place to go that is a central location to find out what activities are going on in standards development organizations and special interest groups around the world in relation to home networking. Without such a place, it can take the better part of a day just to find out who the people are who are working on specific issues around home networking.
So yes, there is a real appreciation of all the work going on in all the standards development organizations (SDOs) and special interest groups (SIGs) and the Wiki we built is populated by all the work going on there. Now you don’t have to spend all day finding information. You can go to one place. People have said this is a valuable resource.
TM: Tell us more about the Wiki.
GL: We have put together a Wiki for the HNET Forum where you can go to see what activity there is currently and have online discussions with others participating in the forum. For example, we had a meeting a few weeks ago, the ITU-T has ongoing meetings, the Broadband Forum had their meeting and everything that happened at those meetings went on the Wiki and prompted discussion. It is dynamic and up to date and it’s important to the industry. The reason say it is valuable is because they have never seen everything they need gathered in one place like this before.
To read the full, in-depth question-and-answer session at our sister publication, Billing & OSS World, click here or on the source link below.
