At the ITU TELECOM ASIA event in Busan in September, one of the big attractions at the stands of Korean firms like SK Telecom, KT/KTF and LG Electronics was the home network demos. Everything from the TV and DVR to the washing machine, gas timer and A/C unit was online, and at the center of it all was an IP gateway directing the action. On the widescreen TV was an icon menu for each appliance, all accessible by one remote-control device. And yes, even the fabled "Internet refrigerator" was online. It came with its own screen, from which the same icon menu can be accessed, making the fridge another control point for the home network. It also allowed users to access online information like traffic cams, weather info and video news broadcasts. Users could even leave video messages for other members of the family.
"So that's what the Internet refrigerator is for," remarked one visitor on the LG stand. (LG, for the record, commercialized the first Net fridge.)
The fact that two of the companies demonstrating home networks were service providers was no coincidence. Each home network can also be accessed via PCs and mobile phones, with the same icon menu seen on the TV or fridge screen at home. This not only allows users to check up on their homes (via Web cams and status reports for each appliance), but also allows the home net to send alerts out to the user when something goes out of whack.
That's one vision of the home network scenario, and there are plenty of others. And while it all sounds future-techy, in reality the technology is already here.
Which is why vendors and service providers are moving on the home networking front. Home networking is increasingly being seen by operators like SKT, KT, Chungwha and others as a logical step up the value chain for their broadband customers. A number of broadband operators in the US and Canada have been taking that step for over a year, and Asia--the biggest broadband market--is closing in.
In June this year, the Korea Home Network Forum, Japan's Echonet (Energy Conservation & Homecare Network) Consortium and China's IGRS (Intelligent Grouping & Resource Sharing) agreed to share their advancements in home networking technology and promote the developed standards internationally, KT Corp is currently trialing a home networking service in a project with Samsung Corp's Housing Development Group in Seoul, where KT is providing 20o households with home network services, including interactive digital broadcasting, home automation, home security, health-care services such as remote video medical consultation, and infotainment services such as VOD, Internet broadcasting and network gaming. Intel has been busy working on the "digital borne," partnering with companies like Microsoft for digital media apps and working with service providers like Chunghwa Telecom, which plans to launch digital home solutions for broadband customers by the end of this year.
Even regulators are working to promote digital homes. Korea's Ministry of Information and Communications, for example, has set a target of connecting 10 million households through home networking systems by 2007, and has allocated 882.8 billion won ($770.2 million) toward development and standardization of home networking technology.
Consequently, home networking is becoming the next focal point for big-money hype. Certainly analysts are impressed. Instat/MDR says broadband sharing and a growing interest in entertainment networking will drive the home-networking equipment market from $8.3 billion this year to $17.1 billion by 2008. And while most of the action is in North America now (accounting for 46% of home network gear sales worldwide), Asia is expected to become the regional leader in home networking by 2008, accounting for 36% of the market as North America drops to 34%. Gartner is even more upbeat, putting the world home networking market at $106.2 billion in 2010. IDC expects the worldwide installed base of home networks to grow from 37 million in 2003 to nearly 111 million in 2008.
The catch--you knew there was one--is that while the technology is here, the standards aren't. Not all of them, anyway. Integration and interoperability remain big snarls in assembling the home network and bridging several network layers, from the network itself to the devices, the interfaces and, in particular, the content (three words: digital rights management). And while some have recently been sorted and others will be in the near future, the other catch (and you knew there would be another one) lies in getting users to comprehend all these new apps and--more importantly --pay for them.
No new wires
One of the key issues with home networking relates to the actual network itself --how to connect all these appliances together? Putting together an Ethernet LAN sounds simple, except that most residences don't come equipped with Category 5 cables. A home Ethernet LAN can be costly and cumbersome since it requires stringing cables all over the house.
Wi-Fi is being touted as the hottest and most immediate solution to the cable problem, though it too faced interoperability issues when it came to new consumer electronics fitted with Wi-Fi interfaces. The Wi-Fi Alliance helped resolve that in September with the release of WMM (Wi-Fi Multimedia), its newest brand for Wi-Fi-enabled consumer electronics components for devices such as TVs, DVD players and mobile phones, the first of which are expected to be certified for WMM interoperability and on shelves in time for Christmas.
However, Wi-Fi isn't always the ideal home networking solution for every home, says David Grubb, Motorola's VP of business development for the consumer/enterprise solutions division.
"In the EU, for example, more homes are made of stone and concrete, so Wi-Fi isn't always the best option to connect the network," he says.
Consequently, the unifying theme for home networking efforts has been "no new wires"--not as in wireless, necessarily, but as in using existing wiring in the home, Grubb says.
"It's about leveraging what's already there in the consumer's home, whether it's the phone wiring, or the coax cables or even the electricity wiring."
There are already several industry standards to choose from in this regard. The Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HomePNA), for example, has developed a specification for home networking that uses existing phone wires. The idea is similar to DSL in the sense that ordinary phone wiring can simultaneously support POTS voice, broadband data and home-network traffic up to 128 Mbps (under the latest version). Just plug your appliances into a phone jack, and off you go. The main limitation, of course, is the number of phone jacks in the home (usually less than five, often maybe two or three, depending on how old the house is).
Powerline is another option, with groups like the HomePlug Alliance pushing standards that allow OFDM-based home networking via electricity wires. With more power plugs in most homes than phone jacks, HomePlug has an advantage over HomePNA, but it has also been hindered by competing technologies, the wide variety of power regulations in different markets, the ongoing resistance from consumers who can't get their head around the concept of plugging a modem into a power socket, and the fact that electrical wiring in the average home is a hostile environment for data. Interference, noise and signal attenuation are constant problems for powerline-based networks.
Newer networking coalition efforts include the Multimedia Over Coax Alliance (MOCA), formed at the start of this year, which aims to enable seamless interconnection of devices such as TVs, digital set-top boxes, DVRs, DVD players, digital VHS, CD/MP3 players and PCs over existing coax cabling. In essence, MoCa wants to be a coax version of the Wi-Fi Alliance, developing specs and certifying interoperability for such devices.
Such standards are not mutually exclusive--both MoCa and HomePlug see their efforts as providing backbone support for Wi-Fi access points, for example. ZigBee is another wireless networking standard for embedded low-power, wirelessly networked, monitoring and control products that add sensing capabilities to home networks. (See "The home network defined", page 20)
Sharing content
But there's more to home networking interoperability than the backbone and the devices. Another issue is content distribution, which is seen by many as one of the major functions of home networks, says Mike Wolf, principal consumer connectivity and content analyst with InStat/MDR.
"The emergence of media networking continues to be the most exciting
