If you're a technology junkie, you probably think of a "home network" as a way to connect more than one computer to your new high-speed cable or DSL broadband connection and share files and printers. If you're not, you are part of the mass market for whom the term "home network" may be completely foreign. However, when you take a look at a typical home or apartment, the mass market has already begun to adopt home networking; they just don't realize it.

A cordless telephone system that features a single base station and multiple handsets is a 'home network' designed to share a single telephone line. Cable and DSL modems connected via Ethernet to a PC constitute a two-node home network. Intelligent communications devices like these are driving home networking into the home right under people's noses.

HomeRF's vision of a networked home starts with the basic premise that there is more to a home network than just a couple of PCs connected to the Internet for email and web browsing. Inside every home you will find at least one telephone and multiple entertainment devices from radios, to stereos, to TVs, and in over 20 millions homes you will find more than on PC.

As broadband technology continues to mature, multi-line telephony, audio and video entertainment, and high-speed data services will be offered to the home over one connection. The technology junkie already knows that a home network is the foundation required to deliver these services to the couch, bedroom, office or patio. The rest of world just looks for products that solve their problems, and they won't care what makes it work as long as it does.

For instance, Napster and similar services already deliver music to millions of home PCs throughout the world, but being tied to a PC with inexpensive, low-quality speakers frustrates most people. Unless they buy a CD burner, they don't have a convenient way to play that music on their stereo systems. Home users are asking for an easy way to play their PC based music throughout their home. HomeRF members Motorola and Simple Devices have come together to offer such a solution. SimpleFi is a device that allows the home PC to act as a large capacity jukebox for your stereo system. With SimpleFi, your stereo connects wirelessly to your PC, making it easy to access music files. Because it is a HomeRF-based wireless home network, it's as simple and easy to use as your stereo - the way it should be!

Another example is cordless telephony. HomeRF member Siemens has been delivering Gigaset telephone systems for some time now, and every time people buy a Siemens 2.4 GHz cordless system, they are in essence installing a home network. Users don't know it, and they don't care. All they want is a solution that gives them multiple cordless phones tied into one base station. Now, imagine what will happen when voice service is brought into a home over a high-speed broadband connection. What do you think users will understand more - that they need a home network to share those voice connections or that they need a cordless phone system that connects directly to their new phone line the same way their old phones did?

It's an interesting paradigm shift. Those of us that are close to the technology see the advantages of a home network without the products. The mass market needs products that solve problems before they can understand their need for a home network.

This is the premise from which HomeRF has been working since the group was formed three years ago. As we looked into the home and noticed the clear differentiation between its requirements (voice, data and entertainment) and the office (data only), we set out to develop a foundation with which solution providers could work that would enable high quality services delivered throughout the home. Not only that, we had to consider that the home is a very noisy environment from a wireless perspective. The presence of microwave ovens, cordless phones, and baby monitors for example, all create interference problems that have to be addressed.

Alternative wireless technologies, such as 802.11b, do not work well in the presence of interference, nor do they address voice or entertainment. Therefore, we developed the HomeRF specification that provides all the performance capabilities of 802.11b technology, plus strong interference-resistance and support for high quality entertainment and toll-quality telephone solutions. Additionally, HomeRF includes the ability to insure that music and videos won't skip while they are delivered from the broadband connection to TVs, stereos and PCs throughout the home.

HomeRF products are available on the market today in the form of network interface cards, adapters, and Internet sharing gateways from companies like Compaq, Intel and Proxim. In the near future, as wireless entertainment devices and telephony products arrive, the paradigm will shift, and home networks will move away from being installed by technology junkies to the rest of the world.

Ken Haase is director of marketing for the Consumer Business Unit of Proxim, Inc. (formerly Farallon Communications). He also serves as chairman of the HomeRF Working Group, which developed the leading wireless home networking technology. Ken has over 15 years of experience in computer networking and has managed the development and introduction of over 50 different products ranging from Ethernet adapters to a complete line of wireless products.