Home connections about to open

Home connections about to open
Common gateway architectures that integrate broadband access with local 802.11 wireless networks are beginning to stabilize, particularly in the Docsis cable modem market and, to a lesser extent, in digital subscriber line realms. If economic indicators are good, a home gateway with integrated router could take center stage at next January's Consumer Electronics Show.

But significant hurdles remain in realizing a volume market for gateways. The efforts of OEMs and cable-TV multisystem operators (MSOs) to drive prices down have resulted in cable modems that once sold for around $400 now seen on the street for $50. This will drive the price of a cable-modem-based residential gateway with embedded router and possible 802.11 access point to a price of between $250 and $400. As a result, In-Stat Inc. predicted in mid-March that within two years, the only surviving Docsis chip set makers might be Broadcom, Conexant, Imedia and Texas Instruments.

What's bad news for the chip set vendors could be great news for end users, though-and a factor that drives networked broadband homes to levels never before seen. Mike Lee, vice president of product development at Rogers Cable Inc., told a recent CableLabs seminar that MSOs had better be prepared for the implications.

The first users of home networks, whether based on 802.11 or wired point-to-point cabling, tended to be technology buffs who installed their nets without assistance. The next generation of users will require plenty of help configuring their networks-support that the MSOs will have to provide, since vendors are not prepared to work with subscribers, Lee said.

Rogers Cable currently finds that wired home networks are cheaper to manage than wireless ones, he said, simply because 802.11 coverage often is unpredictable. But Lee also had some choice words for MSOs that are not prepared to let users experiment with integrated Docsis modem/802.11 gateway products. "Anything that drives IP [Internet Protocol] deeper into the network is a good thing in the long run, and the smarter MSOs will realize that," Lee said. "Most customers will take the attitude, 'If you disallow me from doing something, I'll go around you.' "

CableLabs, through its CableHome project, has a lead over the DSL industry in promoting system-level specs to integrate Docsis functions in a cable modem. The CableHome 1.0 spec provided firewall rule sets, DHCP clients and servers, and automatic provisioning for home gateways that linked to a cable network used for data, voice and video. Version 1.1, currently out to vendors for an advisory ballot, adds advanced security and firewall features, support for virtual private networks and a way for devices on a home network to set up quality-of-service prioritization with the residential gateway.

Most of the work done by the American National Standards Institute and the International Telecommunication Union on xDSL, by contrast, deals solely with chip-level and embedded-software interface definitions. Only the DSL Forum's profile activities and the system-level architecture work of the Full Service Access Network-VDSL coalition attempt to address de facto standards to link the specific broadband modem to an overall home network.

In theory, a Wi-Fi media-access controller and perhaps a transceiver could have been integrated with other gateway functions, both for home networks and for the small, routed networks and switched LANs prevalent in small to midsize businesses. Phil Bourekas, vice president of internetworking products at Integrated Device Technology Inc., said that the continued turmoil over first-generation 802.11b networks, the 5-GHz 802.11a and the higher-speed 2.4-GHz 802.11g has slowed the integration juggernaut.

The same is true in melding Wi-Fi with mobile markets served by wireless carriers that have to balance WLANs with packet data over cellular networks. When Intel Corp. introduced its Centrino platform in mid-March with integrated wireless capability, it laid out a road map for carriers on how to plan for coexistence of wireless meshes and 2.5G packet services like General Packet Radio Service. Wireless carriers have evolved from investigating Wi-Fi to implementing it, said Jim Johnson, vice president of Intel's wireless-networking group, but they still need specific examples of how an unlicensed broadband access technology can coexist with a per-packet licensed, billable data technology like 2.5 data.

The message seems to be that different access strategies apply in different regional markets worldwide. Jay Fausch, senior director of marketing for Alcatel's DSLAM products, said VDSL line cards currently are designed almost strictly for an ETSI form-factor market, with ANSI-based line cards still aimed at ADSL and ADSL+. Alcatel also must gauge the interest in traditional ATM-interface ADSL cards compared with line cards using an Ethernet framing interface for ADSL.

The design of the gateway has become a critical factor for carriers in the era of "triple play" services. If a company can offer the consumer a compelling mix of data, voice and video in a well-priced bundle, the consumer may move to one carrier type for all services and thus be much less susceptible to "churn" than long-distance wireline or cellular voice customers.

Jay Rolls, vice president of data engineering at Cox Communications Inc., said it's important that MSOs specify the type of phone service they provide. "It's important that apples be compared to apples when discussing voice-over-IP with a customer," Rolls said.