The CableLabs® Home Networking Project

Editor’s Note: In this issue, we provide an overview of CableLabs’ Home Networking project, which is developing interface specifications necessary to extend high-quality cable-based services to network devices within the home. Working with technology suppliers, the Home Networking team is addressing issues such as device interoperability, QoS (quality-of-service), and network management.

Introduction

What do you think about when you hear the term home networking? Most of us have probably heard about this hot technology topic, but what is it? To some, home networking is an X.10 low-speed home automation and control system running over power lines to turn lamps and porch lights on and off and monitor security cameras. To others, it’s how they can connect their audio equipment to their TV and their DVD player to their stereo speakers. And some think of how their PCs are connected together at home to share files, the printer, and the Internet connection. Of course your telephones are part of their own network, even if you didn’t think about them that way. Then there are the visionaries who predict interconnection of all of these devices, connection to the Internet "anywhere, anytime," and devices using one another’s capabilities without human intervention.

Home networking has the potential to be any or all of these. Predictions for the growth of home networking device sales are staggering. It seems that market analysts expect adoption of home networks, or more specifically devices that can communicate with one another inside the home, to parallel or surpass what happened with color televisions in the early 1960s, when those technological marvels first appeared. Fifty years ago many people could not conceive of a television. Now TVs are a fixture in homes, and it’s difficult to imagine a home without at least one. Ditto the telephone.

So maybe you think home networks will catch on, maybe you don’t. But why should CableLabs care about them? There are several reasons, but perhaps the most important reason is the way they might enable the delivery of rich new services to cable subscribers. Already cable operators are offering high-speed Internet access, in addition to television programming. Some offer telephony service. These and many other services are possible when a high-speed digital data delivery platform like DOCSIS running over the HFC network connects a rich content source to "consumption devices" in subscribers homes. Services that already have been identified include multiplayer video gaming, video-on-demand, interactive television, and high-fidelity audio delivery. Many more are possible, like remote medical services, power monitoring and conservation, integration of telephony and video (imagine caller ID from an incoming call appearing in a picture-in-picture window while you’re watching TV). This technology is still very young. Creative people will develop services not yet envisioned.

Home networks are the links connecting services available now and in the future from cable operators to consumers at home. It is important that we begin acting now to ensure that these links are suitable for the delivery of these services.

CableLabs’ Home Networking project has the following objectives:

1. Identify new services opportunities presented to member companies by the emergence of home networking technologies, as well as the competitive implications.

2. Extend the capabilities of the DOCSIS, PacketCable™, and OpenCable™ specifications across the home networking boundary in a transparent manner to consumers.

3. Identify and develop an integrated home network service delivery platform that is capable of delivering the full set of services offered over cable networks.

Home Networking Project

By early 1999, cable operators recognized the importance of home networks. Home networking products designed for connection via telephone lines, power lines, and over the air (wireless technologies) were coming to the market in significant numbers. Several consortia had been formed to organize vendors around various home network technologies. Principal home networking consortia are listed below:

l Bluetooth Special Interest Group—a low-power, short-range wireless communications technology.

l HomeRF Working Group—another wireless technology enabling simultaneous transmission of voice calls and data.

l Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HPNA)—a technology enabling data networking over home telephone wiring.

l Home Plug Powerline Alliance (HPPA)—standardizing data networking over home power mains

l Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA)—formed to certify compliance with IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN technology, a wireless extension of Ethernet

l Home Audio/Video Interoperability (HAVi)—formed to standardize communication between A/V devices in the home.

l Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)—developing a set of standards for home networking technologies, including specification of the residential gateway, which is a device that will connect the outside network to networks inside the home.

In addition to these consortia, there are many proprietary home networking technologies. However, the number of these is beginning to decrease as vendors recognize the value of building products following a recognized standard.

Without input from the cable industry, it is not likely that home networking device vendors will design products that forward network traffic for cable-based services in an optimal fashion. Cable operators recognized they need to develop a coordinated dialogue with these vendors. They worked with CableLabs to establish the Home Networking project to accomplish the objectives listed above. The project was formed within CableLabs’ Strategic Assessment group in the first half of 1999, and is progressing following a phased approach.

Phase I

The first phase of the CableLabs Home Networking project focused on surveying existing home networking technologies. The objective of this effort was to identify the home networking technologies in the market or under development, to gain some understanding about the features and capabilities of each, and to become familiar with which manufacturers are playing in this field. As part of information-gathering activities, the project hosted three face-to-face meetings with key home networking vendors and had them each give a presentation about a particular technology.

The first major project deliverable was the Survey of Home Networking Technologies Engineering Report (a CableLabs members-only publication), released in August 1999.

This technology assessment effort also included some product evaluation. The Home Networking project staff set up a simple telephone line network, a HomeRF wireless network and an IEEE 802.11 wireless Ethernet network in the lab and transferred some files between nodes for each network. The telephone line network was demonstrated for cable operators at the Home Networking project meeting during CableLabs’ 2000 Winter Conference in Atlanta, and a report describing the configuration and setup of that network was released to members in April.

Phase II

Information gathered during the Technology Survey made it apparent that existing home networking technologies are not adequate for the delivery of multimedia-rich services from the cable network to end devices in the home. Additional capabilities need to be built into networking devices if they are to extend DOCSIS and PacketCable features and functions beyond the cable modem and Multimedia Termination Adapters (MTAs) to displays and players and other devices connected to networks "behind" the cable modem.

The Home Networking project staff recognized that the best way to accomplish project objectives is to develop a set of specifications for home networking devices intended for use as extensions of the cable network. Before specifications can be developed, however, it is necessary to identify clearly what changes are needed.

CableLabs responded to this need by developing, with CableLabs members, a list of requirements that will serve as the basis for home networking specifications. The deliverable was the document, Home Networking Requirements for Cable-Based Services, released in June 2000. The requirements document defines some terms from the perspective of existing CableLabs specifications, identifies and describes key cable data services (best effort and media streaming high-speed data service and PacketCable services), proposes a set of performance requirements for home networking services, and defines specific requirements for Service Provisioning, Network Management, and Quality-of-Service capabilities.

Once the requirements document was completed and approved, a call for participation went out to the home networking technology vendor community. More than eighty vendors responded by signing the CableLabs Home Networking Nondisclosure Agreement. Of those NDA vendor companies, around 20 agreed to assign people to participate in the standards development process. The Service Provisioning, Network Management. and Quality-of-Service focus teams were formed around the three requirements categories to write the specifications.

Phase III

The Home Networking project is now in its third, specifications development, phase. The focus teams will work toward the development of specifications for home networking devices with the goal of releasing deliverables in roughly two-month intervals. The first deliverables identified are a preliminary list of specifications for each of the three requirements categories, a high-level description of a home network system architecture, and a quality-of-service architecture for home networks. The second NDA vendor meeting, which was held on September 29, marked the end of the first two-month period. A new focus team, Home Networking Reference Architecture, is being formed to continue the home network system architecture definition under way, and to create a Home Network Reference Architecture document.

Parallel work focusing on the strategic assessment aspect of home networking is progressing in the Home Networking project as well. The strategic assessment effort will provide strategic direction for the project based upon the identification and development of the key business requirements of member companies. The assessment will focus on four key areas:

l Assess new and existing technologies for their potential to deliver cable-based services.

l Assess new business opportunities that are enabled through the deployment of home networks.

l Develop performance requirements for the delivery of these services.

l Provide specific guidance to the specification efforts to ensure that they are in alignment with member companies’ business plans.

Future Plans

The Home Networking project will continue with specifications development activities into 2001. The project will continue to work with the DOCSIS, PacketCable, and OpenCable projects to integrate their capabilities for seamless delivery of advanced services to cable customers where they live and work. Test plans will need to be written so that vendors can validate the products built to the CableLabs Home Networking specifications. Ultimately CableLabs may host some interoperability testing for home networking products.

The Home Networking project staff will work with CableLabs’ member community to continue developing an industry vision for home networking strategy and help guide the project’s specifications development activities toward that vision.

It is difficult to predict when networks in the home will be as ubiquitous as televisions and telephones are today. The CableLabs Home Networking staff, in conjunction with CableLabs members, other CableLabs projects, and the home networking technology vendor community, is working to ensure that cable subscribers will enjoy a quality experience as they begin using a variety of rich services delivered directly to them from the cable network.