HomePNA Blog

New Home Networking Market Report

By Rich Nesin, General Manager and Resident Philosopher, HomePNA

Like any good marketing dweeb (yes there are many definitions of “dweeb, none of them complimentary) I read the announcement of a new home networking market study by In-Stat analyst Joyce Putscher with both interest and fear. Interest because she may have succeeded in distilling a few nuggets of wisdom from the hype we marketing types throw at her; and fear that she gave sweeter ink to the competition (and also joy that she didn’t spell out the HomePNA acronym – we’ve been trying squelch it since the turn of the century when it became apparent that the initial interest driving the use of HomePNA in North America was COAX and then phone wires in that order).

“Over the next few years, service providers will drive the growth of in-home networks” and “Two segregated home networks (HN) have been evolving – a service provider-centric network, and a PC-centric network. Each is leveraging different business models and technologies” caught my eye. I believe the first – and not just because it gives my life meaning. The second, I’m not so sure.

As I blogged last week, trade groups focused on the transmission media, such as HomePNA, MOCA, HomePlug, and Wi-Fi (often referred to as the PHY for Physical Interface layer) and industry groups focused on higher layers such as the Broadband Forum and DLNA often work together and may share representatives driving a lot of information sharing. And remember, those representatives are employees of stakeholders -- communication companies, consumer electronics manufacturers, service providers, and other interested parties. 

Given that a home network such as HomePNA incorporates guaranteed quality of service which, as discussed many blogs ago, is designed for triple-play and can transport a variety of data types without degrading time sensitive revenue bearing services like IPTV and VoIP, the technology is there waiting for those cross-pollinating standards people to build the usage models and recommendations to simplify your networked life.  And going on it is, but that doesn't mean it will be adopted.  So, my take is an assertive maybe. 

ITU G.hn Delivers a Spec

By Rich Nesin, General Manager and Resident Philosopher, HomePNA

Have you noticed the press coverage that high performance home networking over existing wires is getting? It makes me nostalgic for the days when analysts dismissed us with a quick ‘the world is going wireless”. It probably is, but installations in millions of IPTV homes over the last couple years say that it isn’t always the best solution. Last week’s ITU announcement about completing the first G.hn standard seems to have gotten the most coverage yet (possibly due to how extraordinarily rare it is for a standards group to deliver a standard on time). So you may be wondering what actually happened and how?

If you have been following my ramblings about home networking standardization in the IEEE P1901; and ITU Q4/15 you may already have a good idea of what happened. If you’re not familiar with the ITU, standards can only be approved during special ITU “plenary” meetings. A plenary is a formal two week meeting of the entire SG 15 (not just the Q4/15 group that is part of SG 15 or the even smaller G.hn group that is part of Q4/15 and has been meeting every couple weeks for the last year to get the work done on time). Like the other meetings, the plenary was very technical with lots of informal working meetings during the evenings to refine the contributions and achieve consensus on the contributions (or in the words of one engineer, “lots of real work was done”). This is the “how”. This and a lot of hands-on direction from some of the world’s largest telcos.  Being the customer has its advantages and these customers see the advantages of a single open world-wide existing-wire home networking standard.

So what happened? I wrote a little about MACs and PHYs back in a June post about HomePNA's guaranteed QoS. Like most other home networking technologies, G.hn is built of two components; a MAC and a PHY. The MAC part, short for medium access control, manages the communication between devices on the home network. The PHY part, short for physical interface, encodes and decodes the data from the MAC – encoding it so that it can be carried efficiently over the media (which in the case of G.hn can be powerlines, phone wires or coax) and decoding the data that is received from the media so it can be processed by the MAC. Every product featuring a G.hn interface will have a MAC and PHY. So what is G.hn’s new G.9960 standard? It’s the new G.hn PHY. The companion G.hn MAC spec is scheduled to be completed in September.

More soon …

So what’s a cableco to do?

By Richard Nesin, president, HomePNA

Last week I wrote a couple of blogs about DOCSIS technology and the traction HomePNA member CopperGate is getting promoting alternative HomePNA-based access technology to cablecos in China for IPTV delivery and Internet access in MDUs.

In the ten years since DOCSIS was invented there have been many technology advances. Fiber, for example, has gone from a core network transport technology to one that is becoming widely deployed worldwide to provide access to the premises and home. So … there you are in a huge consumer market served by a lot of mostly smaller cablecos that provide basic, often analog, cable service to their customers. These cablecos want to provide new triple-play services to their customers. Often there is no existing DOCSIS infrastructure -- in effect, it’s a green-field (an industry term for new construction) opportunity -- and the cablecos are free to select the optimum solution. But they don’t want to pay a lot for it. Hello HomePNA.

What makes HomePNA technology attractive for this market? First, HomePNA can share the coax cable with the cablecos’ TV channels allowing them to reuse the existing wires in the MDU. Second, it is low cost. Where DOCSIS requires a DOCSIS modem in each apartment, HomePNA-based implementations only need a low-cost Ethernet bridge in each apartment. Where DOCSIS requires a port on an expensive CMTS for each apartment, the HomePNA-based approach uses a low cost HomePNA master – essentially a HomePNA Ethernet bridge with different software – to provide connectivity to up to 32 or more apartments in the MDU. Where DOCSIS may require the cableco’s network cabling and equipment to be upgraded to support high speed bi-directional digital communication, the HomePNA approach uses a standard fiber connection instead.

The key to HomePNA technology’s appeal is its synchronous MAC architecture, discussed back in a June blog, which enables HomePNA’s best-in –class QoS (sorry MOCA PQoS) and master-client architecture. 

In a home network every device cocommunicates with every other connected device.  Not so in an MDU. In an MDU, communication is only between the service provider and each individual apartment -- every apartment communicates with the HomePNA master and the HomePNA master communicates to the service provider over the  FTTP connection.  To provide privacy, apartment to apartment communication is prevented by the HomePNA master even though all of the apartments are connected to the same coax cable. 

When a service provider provides triple play VoIP voice, IPTV, and Internet access services over a home network, guaranteed QoS enables interference-free voice and video in the presence of heavy Internet access action (I imagine that kids are downloading videos and songs at all hours of the day all over the world - legally of course).  Guaranteed QoS serves the same purpose in an MDU however it has another important function. HomePNA's guaranteed QoS mechanism also controls how much of the HomePNA capacity is allocated to each apartment -- guaranteeing the amount of bandwidth supplied to each apartment similar to the way a cableco might advertise a given megabits per second Internet access over DOCSIS.

These features and others make the combination of FTTP and HomePNA-based technologies a compelling solution for MDU apartment access.

The Secret Life of the Set-Top Box

By Michelle Gamble-Risley, marketing manager, HomePNA

Did you know your set-top box has taken on a whole new life of its own? The once boring box that sat on top your mother’s television set and did nothing more than help you change the channels to view a few dozen more channels will become a robust entertainment center. Today set-top boxes that use the HomePNA standard to distribute home entertainment over phone line or coax is facilitating an amazing home network entertainment system. Users can expect the set-top box to help transform a once static entertainment experience into a dynamic, multimedia world that merges the control and flexibility of the Internet with television entertainment, which is the essence of IPTV. Soon AT&T U-verse subscribers will enjoy the follow-me TV experience that enables each viewer to watch different programs in any room of the house. One user can pause his or her program and resume in the other room—all without affecting the other viewer’s experience. And the future looks even more interesting and fun. Internet and television enthusiasts can merge their two favorite “surfing” activities—channel surfing and Internet surfing—to enjoy an entertainment experience where they can literally “surf” for movies related to title, actor or category (drama, action, comedy), watch added bonus features typically provided only as special features on DVD. Forget about DVDs, BlueRay or any other newfangled players you have to constantly purchase to upgrade your home entertainment system. And then there will be the challenge of ultra definition TV, the subject of a recent blog that appeared on 3screens.net . The ultimate on-demand experience is coming over a phone line or coax cable near you—all fueled by HomePNA’s amazing triple-play existing wires home networking capabilities.

Proving the Installation Quotient

By Michelle Gamble-Risley, marketing manager, HomePNA

We’ve regularly blogged about HomePNA offering the basis for quick, easy and effective installation that reduces install times. Lightreading ran an article last May that substantiated some of our claims. The article ”The U-Verse Experiment” documented the author’s experience having AT&T U-verse installed in his house. The author gamely goes through and explains not only the details of the installation process but gives HomePNA a big “thank you” for making the testing and installation a painless process.

All of you skeptics out there should read the article. It gives you a step-by-step outline of what happened during the installation process and certainly dispels any concerns you might have about adopting U-verse. Anyone interested in becoming a HomePNA member also might want to note that all of the equipment used during the installation are our members’ equipment. It certainly validates the value and benefit of joining HomePNA. Check it out and then come come join the alliance and enjoy the perks of membership.

QoS Part 3: What’s special about HomePNA’s Guaranteed QoS

By Richard Nesin, president, HomePNA

So by now you must be dieing to know more about HomePNA’s guaranteed QoS. First off – HomePNA also supports priority QoS (actually it has since HomePNA 2). Unlike some of other home networking technologies, HomePNA 3 and 3.1 use a “synchronous MAC” which eliminates collisions on the network and guarantees glitch-free delivery of each real-time packet with the required latency, jitter, and error rate parameters.

Like most other home network technologies, HomePNA is built of two components; a MAC and a PHY. The MAC part, short for medium access control, manages the communication between devices on the home network. Every HomePNA device includes a MAC and PHY however one device, the “master,” is special. The master is what makes the HomePNA MAC synchronous and enables its best-in-class QoS. The HomePNA Master breaks up the transmission time into small parts the way a train is broken up into cars (HomePNA calls them Transmission Opportunities or TXOPs if you really want to know). HomePNA devices with data to send contact the master and ask it for reservations to send a data “stream” to another device (the required bandwidth, maximum latency, jitter and error rate it can tolerate).

The master determines which train cars are available, how many are needed, and how far apart they can be spaced. It puts that information into a schedule which, for the sake of simplicity, HomePNA calls a Media Access Plan or MAP. The master sends the schedule to every device on the network at the same time, synchronizing every device on the network together. Every device then knows which train cars (or TXOPs if you want to get technical) are reserved for its sole use.

Devices sending best effort data are welcome to use any unassigned train cars however they must be prepared to vacate at a moments notice if the master assigns the car to a stream requiring QoS. The master regularly updates and sends the schedule to all of the devices on the network allowing it to add and remove streams from the network whenever required. The QoS parameter information itself is determined in a number of ways. It can be extracted from the 802.1p priority bits, gotten from a “TSpec” sent by the stream originator, or by some other means.

QoS part 2: What is Priority QoS

By Richard Nesin, president, HomePNA

In the June 4th post QoS part 1 we jumped into the middle of a discussion on Quality of Service (QoS). If you recall, QoS is a mechanism used to provide reliable and predictable delivery of real-time data such as IPTV and VoIP streams over a home network that is carrying other “best-effort” data like porn (you are enabling those parental controls, right?). To techies, home network Quality of Service (QoS) used to means priority-based QoS, the original QoS provided by Wi-Fi home networks.

So where does the “priority” in Priority QoS come from? It comes from the IEEE

Data sent over a network is broken into same-size pieces called “packets,” which are like the way the words in a book are broken into pages. Information is attached to each packet to tell the network equipment things like the size of the packet, where the packet comes from, and where it’s going – this is called the packet “header.”

Header information helps network equipment to route the packet from its source, say a server at You Tube, to its destination, say your PC. Included in this header are three “priority bits.” (You’ve probably guessed where this is going, right?) Three priority bits enable eight levels of priority although sometimes only four are used. Real-time data such as video is usually given a high priority and non-real-time “best-effort data” is given low priority. Network equipment uses various techniques to insure the delivery of high-priority data over low priority. Priority QoS, also called Class of Service (CoS), will prioritize one type of data over another but typically won’t help when two same-priority data streams are being sent simultaneously.

QoS part 1: HomePNA Guaranteed QoS versus MOCA PQoS

By Richard Nesin, president, HomePNA

Sometimes I am really impressed. MOCA’s Parameterized Quality of Service (PQoS) is one of the things that really impressed me – not the technology, but the marketing spin.

HomePNA 3.0, released in 2003 and standardized by the ITU in 2005 as G.9954, was designed specifically to provide parameter-based QoS. HomePNA 3.1 added important enhancements. MOCA announced PQoS October 2007 and they heavily promoted it and positioned their organization as the “first” to do it. See what I mean? So, the answer is yes! HomePNA 3.0 and 3.1 have featured parameter-based QoS from the very beginning -- only we call it guaranteed QoS and it’s better.

So why have QoS? Real-time data such as voice and video must be delivered on time with low errors. There’s no hiding it – if it’s late or has lots of errors, the customer will know it – clicks and pops, voice drop out, tiling on the screen, and you know the rest. Lots of technology has been developed by standards groups such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) to implement QoS. You can find QoS in telecommunication core networks, access networks, and cellular networks, however, it’s usually implemented differently depending on the network, application and carrier.

For home networks, guaranteed QoS has come to mean that certain “parameters”, key to the delivery of real-time data, are guaranteed by the home networking technology. These parameters are latency, the amount of time it takes for the data to get from one point to another; jitter, the variation in the time between data arriving; throughput, the amount of data you can send in a given time; and error rate. (See where PQoS gets its name?)

What’s the difference between HomePNA guaranteed QoS and MOCA’s PQoS? HomePNA QoS eliminates data “collisions” on the home network. It provides greater control at a lower level so it is more efficient and enables more data to be transferred.