Introduction

Brian lives in a lovely two-story, 3,500 square feet home on a large heavily wooded lot with a pool.  He wanted a wireless network to avoid being confined to his home office while working at home – specifically because he just bought new patio furniture and wanted to sit outside.  You see, Brian works at home a lot and has his e-mail forwarded using a web-based e-mail account.

Brian’s mistake was first choosing the faster 802.11b products which operate at speeds up to 11 Mbps, compared to 1.6 Mbps for HomeRF, without realizing that 802.11b is designed for office use in networks supported by IT professionals.  Brian needed simplicity and a wireless solution designed for consumer households since he had no desire to become a network administrator.  Like most consumers, Brian’s needs are modest, and today’s HomeRF products have more than enough bandwidth for his ADSL service.  (Next generation HomeRF 2.0 products will have performance comparable to 802.11b and more features.)

Home networking “early adopters” like Brian often only want a way to share a single Internet connection or other PC resources like printers.  They are not yet demanding many of the unique capabilities of HomeRF such as the ability to integrate high-speed data, voice communications, and entertainment networking, but these features will become important as broadband service providers begin offering service bundles.   These bundles will include services such as local, long-distance, and wireless telephone, advanced calling features, television, and Internet access; and they will cost less to deliver, improve customer loyalty, and save consumers about $100 per month.  That’s why the HomeRF Working Group believes broadband will drive home networking technologies and mass markets.

The bad 802.11b experience

Brian went to his local computer retailer and bought the 802.11b products (vendor name is irrelevant) – PC Card network interfaces for laptop PCs and a wireless residential gateway.  After several painful and unsuccessful attempts at completing the installation, Brian decided he needed “a degree in technology just to figure out how to get it installed.”  That’s when he called Nikki Robison, saying, “If this is the future of home networking, it will never take off.  Home networking must be easy, cheap and compelling to Joe Consumer.”  Nikki is Brian’s friend and somewhat of an expert in home technologies.  She told Brian to consider products based on HomeRF instead of 802.11b since they are designed for consumer households instead of offices.

Brian never found out what prevented a successful setup nor did he care to figure it out, and that’s typical.  He just returned the brand-x products to the store where he bought them.

The good HomeRF experience

The retailer had two promotional end-caps about 15 feet apart displaying HomeRF USB adapters between two networked computers so shoppers can experience home networking and play multi-user games. Brian’s second purchase decision was based on:

• Nikki’s recommendation – Recommendations from friends and peers are far more important than ones from technologists or sales people.

• Store experience – The ability to actually “experience” the benefits of a home network had a big influence.

• Brand recognition

Brian was finally satisfied when the set-up process was easy.  His desktop PC ran Windows ME and recognized the USB adapter without any trouble.  He also installed the wireless NIC inside his laptop with the same ease and then promptly walked outside to the pool house at the opposite end of the pool (about 100 feet away) and “chatted” with Nikki online, describing the network as working great and with no detectable delays even at that distance.  The only noticeable change after installation is that it takes a bit longer to display the home page after first establishing the ADSL connection, but that’s because the PC is now acting as a communications gateway and security firewall.  Once connected, however, surfing speed is as fast as ever.

Analysis

Brian is typical of most consumers that don’t want to become network administrators in order to benefit from home networking.  He never figured out why the 802.11b product didn’t work.  It may have been due to poorly written installation wizards designed for IT professionals instead of consumers, or it could have been related to the variety of devices in his home that cause radio interference in the same frequency band.

Even if Brian were able to setup his 802.11b network, he would likely have found periods of time when the network slowed down or failed completely.  Like most homeowners, Brian has florescent lights and a microwave oven that leaks RF interference, but the biggest source of interference would have been his two 2.4 GHz cordless phones. 

The DSSS (direct sequence spread spectrum) technology used in 802.11b uses static frequency channels and politely waits for any interference to go away.  Interference in an office environment is usually caused by other data packets contending for use of the frequency channel and goes away quickly.  But since 2.4 GHz DSSS cordless phones also use static frequency channels and grab a channel for the duration of the call, 802.11b would wait for a long time – not slowed down but shut down – until the phone call ends.

Brian has noticed no interference problems with his HomeRF network because of its FHSS (frequency hopping spread spectrum) technology, which is more adept at handling interference.  FHSS also makes HomeRF more secure than 802.11b – important to consumers who don’t have IT professionals to protect them from hacker attacks.  When consumers buy broadband services based on DSL or cable modems, they may also buy a home gateway (or gateway software) to share the broadband connection and provide firewall security, but security is easily defeated on 802.11b networks, especially if using out-of-the-box defaults.