HD Video Drives Next-Generation Wired Networking Technology

The market for home networking products has been traditionally dominated by wireless products based on the IEEE 802.11 standard (with its 11b, 11g and the latest 11n versions). Wired alternatives, which make use of power lines, phone lines and coaxial cables, have had a smaller share of the market. In my opinion this has been caused by two factors:

- Lack of awareness: many consumers do not even know that there are other networking alternatives in addition to 802.11 wireless

- Wireless was “convenient” and “good enough”: although wireless in general is not capable of guaranteeing perfect reliability for video distribution applications (common problems such as dropped packets or interference from other wireless networks in the neighborhood, can affect video performance significantly), most users of 11g and 11n networks do not notice these problems when sending e-mails or browsing the Internet.

This situation is now slowly changing, and the major reason is that there is a new generation of multimedia applications for which 802.11 wireless is not “good enough” anymore. In general, most application that require sending high-quality video are too sensitive to packet drops and cannot work reliably over wireless networks.

There are two major drivers for video distribution applications:

• IPTV Service Providers (like AT&T here in the US or British Telecom or Telefonica in Europe) are providing video content in both SD and HD format using their existing fiber and DSL access networks. All of them need a reliable way to deliver the IPTV content from the Residential Gateway to one or more Set-Top-Boxes somewhere else in the home.

The vast majority of IPTV Service Providers today are choosing wired options (power lines, phone lines and coaxial cable) for in-home IPTV distribution, as wireless is usually not capable of satisfying the strict QoS requirements demanded by IPTV Service Providers.

One of the most popular options is using DS2 200 Mbps technology (based on the UPA standard) to deliver video over existing power lines, of which British Telecom, Telefónica or Portugal Telecom are good examples.

• A new generation of devices capable of receiving HD video (Apple TV, Microsoft XBOX 360, etc) are rapidly becoming popular in many homes. Most of the times, wireless solutions do not have the bandwidth and the reliability to carry HD streams to every room in consumers’ homes, so many users are being forced to look for alternative wired networking solutions. DS2-based Powerline networking adapters from well-known consumer brands such as NETGEAR, D-LINK or BUFFALO are also good examples of products that address these needs.

The powerline industry is working hard to develop products that provide even higher data rates. UPA has recently announced its effort to develop a 400 Mbps standard (called PowerMAX), while individual companies (like DS2) are already demonstrating technology capable of achieving that data rate.

Market Fragmentation

Even if wired networking products are becoming more popular, in the long term the industry still needs to address a significant challenge before it can achieve the same market size as wireless: market fragmentation.

Today, consumers and Service Providers have to choose between at least five different incompatible options for wired networking: MoCA (using coaxial cables), HomePNA (using phone lines and coaxial cables) and three different powerline standards (UPA, HomePlug and HD-PLC) which can also be adapted to operate over coaxial cable and phone lines. Having so many non-interoperable options is negative for the industry, and has also been one of the reasons why the market for wired networking has not grown as fast as wireless.

The industry is now taking its first steps towards solving the fragmentation problem. While some groups seem to forget that the ultimate goal of standards is achieving full interoperability (go read “How to Kill the Home Networking Industry” for a controversial discussion on this point), other efforts to achieve a unified standard seem to be going in the right direction.

As I recently wrote in “Towards A Converged Home Network”, ITU-T G.HN today provides the most promising path to achieve a single-PHY/single-MAC standard that can work over any wire (power lines, phone lines and coaxial cables):

"The trend to use more than one wire has already started. ITU-T (the standardization organization responsible for creating all DSL and VDSL standards) has created a group [G.HN] with the goal of designing a specification that will work over any wire [power lines, phone lines and coaxial cables] with a target PHY data rate of 1 Gbps. Actual throughput will be medium-dependent (today's tentative targets are achieving 400 Mbps in 99% of coaxial cable connections and 250 Mbps in 98% of powerline connections), to reflect the fact that some lines are "cleaner" than others."

HomeGrid Forum, an organization founded by DS2, Intel, Panasonic, Infineon, Texas Instruments and six others companies, plays a role which complements ITU-T G.HN.

HomeGrid Forum has three major goals:

1. Accelerating the creation of a "single-PHY/single-MAC" standard at ITU-T G.HN for powerline/coaxial/phoneline

2. Ensuring fast market adoption, and

3. Ensuring interoperability.

During the Closing Keynote on June 25, 2008, at CONNECTIONS™ in Santa Clara, Paul Liao, CTO, Panasonic, will discuss the efforts of HomeGrid Forum to promote a single, worldwide standard and will outline the benefits of the initiative in driving worldwide adoption of networked multimedia products.

Chano Gomez, VP Technology & Strategic Partnerships, DS2, will be a speaker in the panel “CONNECTED DEVICES: A Grown-up Home Network: Imagine the Possibilities!”

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Submitted by Chano Gomez, DS2