Project Number: FP6-IST-507554 Project Title: BROADBAND in ...

7.1.2 Home Networks 1 : Technologies / Standardisation
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FP6-IST-507554/JCP/R/Pub/D2.2-3.2
High-speed Internet is spreading. Homes that used to have little communication technology in the past now have
multiple computers, peripherals like printers and scanners, televisions, radios, stereos, DVD players, VCRs,
cordless telephones, PDAs, and other electronic devices.
Home networks link the many different electronic devices in a household by way of a local area network (LAN).
The network can be point-to-point, such as connecting one computer to another, or point-to-multipoint where
computers and other devices such as printers, set-top boxes, and stereos are connected to each other and the
Internet. There are many different applications for home networking. They can be broken into five categories:
resource sharing, communications, home controls, home scheduling, and entertainment/information.
Resource Sharing
Home networking allows all users in the household to access the Internet and other applications at the same
time. In addition, files (not just data, but also audio and video depending on the speed of the network) can be
swapped, and peripherals such as printers and scanners can be shared. There is no longer the need to have more
than one Internet access point, printer, scanner, or in many cases, software packages.
Communications
Home networking allows easier and more efficient communication between users within the household and
better communication management with outside communications. Phone, fax, and e-mail messages can be
routed intelligently. Access to the Internet can be attained at multiple places in the home with the use of
terminals and Webpads.
Home Controls
Home networking can allow controls within the house, such as temperature and lighting, to be managed though
the network and even remotely through the Internet. The network can also be used for home security monitoring
with network cameras.
Home Scheduling
A home network would allow families to keep one master schedule that could be updated from different access
points within the house and remotely through the Internet.
Entertainment/Information
Home networks enable a multiple of options for sharing entertainment and information in the home. Networked
multi-user games can be played as well as PC-hosted television games. Digital video networking will allow
households to route video from DBS and DVDs to different set-top boxes, PCs, and other visual display devices
in the home. Streaming media such as Internet radio can be sent to home stereos as well as PCs.
The speed of home networks is also important to consider. Most home networking solutions have speeds of at
least 1 Mbps, which is enough for most everyday data transmission (but may not be enough for bandwidthintensive
applications such as full-motion video). With the development of high-speed Internet access and
digital video and audio comes a need for faster networks. Several kinds of home networks can operate at speeds
of 10 Mbps and up. Digital video networking, for example, requires fast data rates. DBS MPEG-2 video requires
3 Mbps and DVD requires between 3 and 8 Mbps. HDTV requires more speed than current home networks have
but that should change in the future, as home networks get faster and as technology develops and adapts to new
Internet appliances and digital media.
In general, the home networking standards can be divided into two large groups: in-home networking standards,
that provide interconnectivity of devices inside the home, and home-access network standards, that provide
external access and services to the home via networks like cable TV, broadcast TV, phone net and satellite.
Additionally, there are the mobile-service networks that provide access from mobile terminals when the user is
away from home. Currently there is no dominant wired home networking standard, and networks are likely to be
heterogeneous. A comprehensive compilation of the standards for multimedia networking is given in the
MEDIANET2 project.
1 Future Home, http://dbs.cordis.lu/ IST-2000-28133
2 MediaNet, http://www.ist-ipmedianet.org/home.html