New home networks may change the face of IT

The growth of IPTV and other network-based entertainment services is likely to change the face of home networking and could affect enterprises, according to Gartner.

Although wireless LANs will remain the dominant form of home network, emerging wired technologies, such as HomePNA, HomePlug, and MOCA (Multimedia Over Coax Alliance), will grow quickly over the next five years, according to Gartner analyst Paul O’Donovan. His predictions will be presented this week at the Gartner ITxpo in San Francisco.

Many service providers and cable operators will promote these emerging networks as easy-to-use, high-bandwidth pathways for the multimedia content they’re starting to sell, he said.

Both DSL and cable Internet providers are investing in new wide-area networks and services to deliver a “triple play” of voice, video, and data or even a “quadruple play” that also includes mobile phones. The telecommunications carriers are making the biggest overhauls, building FTTH (fiber to the home) or FTTN (fiber to the node) networks at a cost of billions of dollars. Bundled services should benefit them through higher monthly bills and more loyal subscribers.

Home wireless LANs can’t reliably deliver performance-sensitive content, such as high-definition IPTV around a home, say proponents of the new technologies, and service providers are listening. For example, AT&T is starting to offer its subscribers HomePNA networks, and Verizon is offering MOCA gear to customers of its Fios FTTH service.

Gartner expects these new kinds of networks to grow rapidly over the next few years. Coaxial cable, the kind of wire typically used to deliver cable TV to set-top boxes, will be used in only about 7 percent of home networks this year but rise to about 12 percent by 2011, according to O’Donovan’s presentation. Powerline networks that use home electrical wiring will also jump up, while Wi-Fi use flattens at about 25 percent. And by 2011, counting all technologies, about half the home networks in the U.S. will use gear from service providers, Gartner predicts.

With more employees working at home either occasionally or full time, enterprises should know what kinds of home LANs they’re using, O’Donovan said. This will be especially important when service providers let entertainment content, VoIP, and productivity applications share the same infrastructure, he said.

Simply connecting to the home network may not change much. With their new home networks, for example, both AT&T and Verizon, are providing routers that include Wi-Fi and some Ethernet ports. (Adapters for hooking up Ethernet in another room are not as easy to come by yet.) But O’Donovan warns that enterprises should make sure their business applications and VoIP calls don’t get crowded out by high-definition TV or video-on-demand.

Judging from what service providers and proponents of the new technologies say, there isn’t much to worry about in this respect. Standard priority mechanisms used by applications will establish the appropriate status on both MOCA and HomePlug, according to executives of the groups backing those technologies.

The picture on HomePNA is less clear. With that technology, there is a variety of ways to determine priority, said Rich Nesin, president of the HomePNA Alliance and vice president of marketing at Coppergate Communication, which makes chips for HomePNA gear. Coppergate chips can filter IP packets based on any field in the packet header, and it’s possible a service provider could use some of these fields to prioritize its own packets, he said.

Gartner’s O’Donovan still fears problems.

“There has to be a really strong temptation for the cable companies to instigate some form of [quality of service] for their video services, which by its very nature must put some cap on the bandwidth available for data on the network,” O’Donovan said.

As a result, employers may want to work out deals with particular service providers to ensure a high quality of service for what they care about, he said. Then they could direct employees to work with whatever provider they’ve partnered with in a given area.

Fast new home networks sprouting

Wi-Fi put home networks on the map when it emerged several years ago as a fairly fast, reasonably easy-to-use technology that didn’t make consumers pull wires under their carpets or along their walls. It still dominates the market and will for the next few years, according to Gartner analyst Paul O’Donovan, but he sees some wired network types rapidly gaining market share on the strength of service providers offering them to subscribers. Here are three of the most prominent “no new wires” networks:

HomePNA: The Home Phone Network Alliance was formed in 1998 to offer a fast home network that used existing phone lines. HomePNA 3.1, the current version of the specification, can also use coaxial cable — the wires that carry cable TV — and doesn’t stand for anything, according to the HomePNA Alliance. The latest version offers a top speed of 320Mbps and guaranteed quality of service. Among the products already available are set-top boxes from Motorola and Cisco’s Scientific-Atlanta subsidiary as well as residential gateways and HomePNA-to-Ethernet bridges. For connectivity in rooms where there isn’t a phone jack or coaxial hookup, users can attach a Wi-Fi access point to the network in another room using a router or Ethernet bridge. Most equipment is provided by service providers, according to Rich Nesin, president of the HomePNA Alliance. All subscribers to AT&T’s high-speed U-verse service get HomePNA networks, and users of other AT&T broadband services can also get one.

HomePlug: Promoted by the HomePlug Powerline Alliance, this technology sends data signals through the electrical wiring inside a home. In many cases, this gives users more places to plug in because more rooms have electrical sockets than phone or cable jacks. Any Ethernet device can be plugged into the network through an adapter about the size of a cigarette pack that plugs into the socket, said Jed Johnson, CTO of the group. HomePlug hit the market in 2001; the latest specification, HomePlug AV, will deliver about 30Mbps from most sockets in a home, he said. It has three levels of service quality, the best of which reserves bandwidth for an application. HomePlug is not offered by any service providers in the U.S., where coaxial cable is in most homes, but is offered by France Telecom, Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom, and other carriers outside the U.S., according to the group.

MOCA: This coaxial-only system, promoted by the Multimedia Over Coax Alliance, delivers more than 100Mbps of real throughput from 97 percent of coaxial jacks, according to Rob Gelphman, chairman of MOCA’s Marketing Work Group. A system of reservations and scheduling ensures quality of service, said Anton Monk, CTO of MOCA. MOCA is an entertainment network designed to complement data networks like Wi-Fi, which can be attached to the consumer’s broadband router separately from the MOCA connection, Monk said. Shipping and planned products include MOCA-to-Ethernet bridges and set-top boxes. Verizon sets up MOCA networks for subscribers to its Fios fiber-to-the-home service.