HomePNA Blog

G.hn Home Network Standard – Not Quite Smooth Sailing

By Rich Nesin, General Manager and Resident Philosopher, HomePNA

Well fun times for all you ITU G.hn watchers. As I wrote back in June, G.hn has settled on some "Baseline Text" for most of the protocol pieces that lie upstream of the G.9960 G.hn PHY (which anybody that follows G.hn can tell you was consented last December). So … here’s to more smooth sailing in the standards body. Did I hear a “not quite”? True, the group is moving briskly toward consent at the September 28 to October 9 meeting in Geneva , however it seems everyone isn’t running in the same direction.

So what’s happening? It’s gotten more contentious, that's what. At the G.hn meeting in Concord, Ca last week, some of the attendees (guess who) introduced a contribution to add compatibility between HomePlug and G.hn. If you’ve been following the evolution of the standard, you probably remember the decision made long-ago to work for co-existence with existing technologies, not compatibility. That decision was pragmatic and probably prevented a HomePlug-UPA-HD-PLC-MOCA-HomePNA (did I leave anyone out?) shootout that could have killed, or at least maimed, the new G.hn all-wire standard effort. The changes proposed last week would have affected both the MAC and PHY in fairly significant ways and may have posed a problem for the one chip-all wire goal.

Anyway, to make a long story short, the group’s historical reticence to require compatibility with other home networking technologies combined with major angst over anything that could delay completion of the final drafts caused even some participants who planned to stay neutral at the meeting to dissent. The contribution was presented, debated, dissected, debated some more and, in the end, fell far short of consensus for technical and practical reasons. Is it smooth sailing from here on? Can’t say for sure as all eyes (or at least the ones that care enough to read this blog) turn to Geneva. It’s not over till it’s over and then the market will decide.

IEEE P1901 – Is the Opera Truly Over?

By Rich Nesin, General Manager and Resident Philosopher, HomePNA

Well the season finale of my favorite soap, how the IEEE turns, has aired. And what a season it was! Now it’s time for everyone to live happily ever after (at least they would if I wrote the script, three years to get to a draft spec is enough).

If you’re familiar with how the IEEE developed the elegant two PHY P1901 proposal, then you may not be surprised that the approved version includes not two but three PHYs. That’s right. Despite defeating a previous bid to use the ITU’s G.hn PHY for P1901, the final compromise proposal includes G.hn in addition to Intellon’s HomePlug AV Panasonic’s HD-PLC PHYs.

The inside story is that the P1901 proposals squeaked by and may well have been headed for another defeat. The addition of the G.hn PHY saved the day by drawing new supporters (including G.hn pioneer Coppergate Communications who voted yes for the first time).

So this is great for everyone, right, a real win-win? I certainly hope so but there are nasty rumors circulating about it being a political ruse and behind the scenes efforts taking place to remove G.hn from the IEEE P1901 draft standard. The industry took a giant step forward when G.hn was added to P1901 and now it’s time for the IEEE to walk the walk and do the right thing for everyone.

Do cablecos really need a home network?

By Richard Nesin, president, HomePNA

The news stories I wrote about last week -- AT&T launching its eagerly anticipated home network based whole-home DVR and Cablevision announcing that it will be launching its network based RS-DVR early next year -- raised some points about basic technology differences between telcos and cablecos. The Online Reporter, published by Rider Research, put it well in an article this week:

“The reason the telcos adopted home network technology far ahead of the cablecos is that telcos use the home network as their sole means of distributing all TV - DVR, VoD or broadcast - to each set-top box in the home.

As we and others have pointed out, the cable TV companies, specifically Comcast - the world’s largest - have not publicly committed to company-wide deployments of a particular home network technology.

Cablecos, unlike telcos, don’t have to have a home network to deliver video within the home. They use their standard video MPEG delivery system and current digital set-top boxes to deliver video to the home’s TV sets.”

So one question I (and apparently other people that follow triple play and home networking) have is when, if ever, will the cablecos start to deploy home networking for distributing video.  HomePNA is establishing itself as the technology of choice for North American telcosand powerline home networking is seeing success in Europe where the requirements are lowerbut I have to wonder about the future of our cousins over at MOCA -- which is home networking designed for cablecos.

Comparing IEEE 1901 and ITU G.hn

By Richard Nesin, president, HomePNA

I just returned from my first IEEE P1901 meeting. If you follow home networking (and who doesn’t?) you probably recognize the IEEE as the group that developed and continues to evolve the Wi-Fi 802.11 and Ethernet 802.3 standards. They do a lot of other things and some of those things are being done in P1901. The P1901 group was formed a couple of years ago to standardize networking over powerlines. The group started with three non-compatible industry technologies: HomePlug, UPA and HD-PLC.  According to the project authorization request or “PAR” approved by the IEEE, P1901 is working on a standard to enable coexistence and interoperability over powerlines for both home networking and broadband over powerline (BPL) applications.

The meeting was well attended with representatives of over 40 “entities” present. I counted at least one copy of Robert’s Rules of Order for every three attendees; a very respectable ratio. (An exaggeration but not far from the truth). The meeting was very formal and Robert’s Rules were quoted frequently.  There were several conflicting agendas being pursued and a good deal of the meeting was spent discussing what motions were and were not allowed.  Almost all of the technical work seems to have been done behind the scenes. Having attended G.hn meetings, where most of the time is spent presenting and discussing technical contributions, this surprised me.

I was also struck by the very different policies and procedures followed by the IEEE P1901 and ITU-T G.hn – or for that matter between P1901 and other IEEE groups. Unlike some IEEE groups, P1901 only allows one vote per entity (which is a good thing).  An entity can be a company, industry SIG, university, etc. As discussed back in the March blog about the differences between Special Interest Groups or SIGs and standards organizations like the ITU-T and IEEE, SIGs are usually run by the “privileged” members.  Allowing SIGs equal voting rights can provide companies or groups of companies with additional influence on votes potentially making the process more political. The ITU-T is more selective and doesn’t allow SIGs to be members. Now that you know more than you ever wanted to know about entities, we’ll just call them members.

Members must join the P1901 group and attend a number of meetings to be entitled to vote (they lose voting privileges if they miss too many consecutive meetings). It’s not possible for a company to send a lot of employees to a given meeting to force through a favorite motion (although I’ve seen this done in other IEEE groups operating under different rules).

As far as the work itself, it’s taken a while and will take a while longer. The current voting isn’t on a draft standard, it’s on three individual “clusters”; one for home networking called “IH” for in home, one for BPL called access and one for coexistence called coexistence. The clusters must each be approved by over 75% of the groups members. They will then be combined into one working document that follows the IEEE style rules and voted on again. After 75% of the members approve, the document will be considered mature enough to be a draft standard. Another 75% vote will put the draft before the sponsor (ie the IEEE Communication Society) where it will undergo an new iterative review and approval voting process by that group per their own policies and procedures to make sure it meets the PAR objectives and IEEE requirements before it is released as a standard. As you know if you have been following this blog, ITU-T is a consensus process.  When a draft standard achieves consensus, it is released. 

Two standards groups, two very different operating modes.

Why Do TelcoTV Install Times Vary? Part 2

Tens of thousands of telco IPTV installations ago we blog’d about IPTV installation times. In that March 27 post we noted that as much as industry watchers would like draw comparisons about home networking from IPTV installation times, it’s a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma (apologies to Winston Churchill).

The differences between a European telco offering HomePlug and a North American telco installing HomePNA is much more than HomePlug versus HomePNA (or MOCA, UPA, HD-PLC, …). In some cases – especially North America -- most of the stuff done during installation has little to do with home networking and more to do with the IPTV service itself.

So what does the installer do when he gets to the customer’s home, you ask? Several HomePNA members have done ride-alongs on telco IPTV installations so we are able to shed a little light on the process (at least for some North American telcos).

If you have had cable or satellite service installed, you won’t be surprised to learn that the first step is to review the order with the customer. The installer then does a site survey and determines where the passive components, residential gateway and set-top boxes will be installed. For older homes it’s likely that there is old equipment that needs to be disconnected.

Since the new IPTV service may involve upgrading or adding new broadband service, the technician also needs to install, provision (turn on), and test new DSL or fiber service. (In some cases installers use commercial test equipment that can test both the broadband access service and the home networking wires.) If the fiber or DSL is installed on the outside of the house, the technician needs to figure out which wires he will use to bring the service into the house. The remaining equipment is then installed, middleware updated, and the system, including the home network, is tested.

In many cases the installation also includes a wireless LAN which must be configured and tested as well. And don’t forget training the customer on use of the new remote control and DVR features, setting up the customer’s Internet, and so on.