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Home Networking
Home networking is the collection of elements that process, manage, transport, and store information, enabling the connection and integration within a broadband wide area network of multiple computing, control, monitoring, and communication devices in the home (PCs; consumer electronics such as TVs, digital video cameras, recorders, game consoles, hi-fi systems; mobile phones and PDAs, white goods and other home appliances). Deployment of home networks and convergence with the broadband access networks represent an unprecedented opportunity to offer value-added services to residential users, from home entertainment and communication to e-health/e-inclusion, e-government, home automation and security services.
Although many home networking products and solutions are available today on the market, the challenge of converting complexity of choice and interconnection into seamless interoperable simplicity for the consumers has not been fully met yet. A plethora of indoor networking technologies, wired (e.g. ethernet, cable, powerline) or wireless (e.g W-LAN, Bluetooth, Ultra-Wide Band), and media formats co-exist today and interoperability between them remains an issue. In addition, different communities of stakeholders have defined independent specifications for devices connectivity, services discovery and management: these are for instance the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) forum led by the PC industry, the Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi) and the DSLHome from the DSL Forum led by the telecom industry, and the Home Audio Video Interoperability (HAVi) forum led by the consumer electronics industry. The tendency today is to rally these different frameworks in order to properly address the convergence between the broadcasting, internet, and mobile environments and ensure a rapid market take-off. At international level, such a cross-industry consolidation exercise is conducted today through the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) [http://www.dlna.org/]. Other regional similar initiatives include the Intelligent Gathering and Resource Sharing (IGRS) in China or the Ubiquitous Open Forum (UOPF) [http://uopf.org/] in Japan, while a Code of Practice is being developed in Europe through the CENELEC SmartHouse project .
Home networking and IST research
Research in IST on home networking goes beyond the indoor issue of devices connectivity and interworking. The objective is to develop an end-to-end system approach for services bundling and provisioning while safeguarding users interests and freedom of choice:
- end to-end system approach : the different stakeholders of the digital media value chain have to collaborate together to address key issues such as quality of service, digital rights management, security and personalisation in a networked perspective. This implies in particular the development of open distributed architectures for devices and services discovery as well as co-operation between home platforms (e.g. residential gateways, set-top boxes) and the content and service providers back-end systems. In addition, the system should take into account the continuity of service aspects for remote access and control on the move (“extended home” concept);
- services bundling and provisioning : services bundling and integrated management are key factors for the development of home networks. The market growth is today largely driven by digital entertainment applications (e.g media streaming and distribution across different devices). Lower bandwidth applications such as home automation should not be left behind, as they promise substantial social (e-inclusion, e-health) or environmental (e.g. energy management) perspectives. A unified middleware approach should therefore be pursued in order to ensure interoperability between the different applications domains (consumer electronics, PC, mobile and home automation);
- users interests and freedom of choice : different home networks architectures are being developed by telcos, broadcasters and CE manufacturers, or the IT industry around different “hubs” should it be a residential gateway, a TV set-top box or a PC. Freedom of choice for the users implies the co-existence of these different solutions, and the need to establish bridges between their respective environments (typically OSGi, DVB-MHP and UPnP ). At the same time services interoperability should be ensured, in order to avoid any consumer lock-in with a given provider. User’s privacy and security needs also to be ensured as well as protection of the content they not only receive but also generate.
Examples of FP6 projects addressing these different issues are:
TEAHA: www.teaha.org
EPERSPACE: www.ist-eperspace.org
MEDIANET: www.ist-ipmedianet.org
The FP6 co-ordination group on home networks is managed throught the BIP specific support action: www.ist-bip.org