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It might seem natural to WLAN vendors coming from the enterprise market that there will be competition between technologies. While this approach may be acceptable for the commercial segment where there are company-wide technology adoption decisions and technical support resources, it is not so for the residential market. The appeal of wireless home networking is dramatically limited if there are incompatibility issues, especially when consumers are expected to pay a premium for WLAN solutions. |
Navin Sabharwal received his MBA from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is an Analyst with Allied Business Intelligence, covering residential networking approaches and related areas. His latest report on this area is titled "The Broadband Home: In-Home Networks, Control Subsystems and Residential Gateways". |
"No new wires" home networking is rapidly becoming a three-pronged race between phone line, power line and wireless network media. Though probably all will find their own niche, it seems likely that phone line solutions will dominate at least in the short run, primarily because they provide a very cost effective and high performance solution for the residential market. Phone line networking has also benefited from the formation of a de facto standards setting body, the Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HomePNA). In the long run, wireless solutions, mainly operating in the 2.4 GHz band, will emerge as very potent competitors to phone line based products. The absolute price difference between the two will decline over time, and consumers will increasingly look for a flexible and omnipresent solution within the home.
There are three broad categories that wireless
technologies can be applied to in the household including home control applications,
voice/basic data applications, and multimedia applications. For home control applications,
which are not really examined in this piece, data rates of approximately only 10 Kbps are
required. For voice and basic data networking data rates of 1-2 Mbps are sufficient given
that the majority of households will still be connecting to the Internet using analogue
dial-up connections for the foreseeable future. Moreover, throughput of 1-2 Mbps is
sufficient to handle the effective speed most broadband services provide today. However,
in order to stream video significantly higher data rates are needed. A DVD stream would
require an effective throughput of 3-8 Mbps, while a HDTV stream would require an
effective throughput of around 19 Mbps. For the immediate future wireless networking
products must be able to achieve effective data rates of approximately 8 Mbps in order to
realistically target multimedia applications. The caveat is that in general the claimed
data rates for various wireless local area network (WLAN) technologies are theoretical raw
data rates, not real-life effective data rates. Only with compression techniques can any
of the current technologies hope to target HDTV-type video streams.
However, wireless home networking solutions for data and video applications will become more important as the cost differential versus phone line networking technology decreases and the number of devices operating in the home requiring mobile operation increases. Yet, the key long-term inhibitor to wireless solutions challenging the early pre-eminence of phone line networking is without a doubt the lack of standards. There has been a de facto standards effort with the Home Radio Frequency Working Group (HomeRF). However, its conservative schedule and the relatively low data rates (1-2 Mbps) specified have left it vulnerable to competition. Hence a number of alternative efforts have emerged that are seeking to get the product to market earlier, and in some cases at a cheaper cost per node. Some of these technologies are designed with the residential market in mind, while others are crossing over from the enterprise market. The implications of the lack of a wireless home networking standard are potentially very profound.
A number of players in the industry argue that consumers don’t care about the technologies, only about the performance of the product out-of-the box. However, this argument is myopic in that the issues are inter-linked to a large degree. Problems will particularly arise out of the lack of interoperability and coexistence between wireless solutions using different technologies. This scenario may become common when consumers start deploying more than simple two-node networks and have devices compliant with different technologies.
The end result is that none of the WLAN technologies currently being used, or to be adopted shortly, will be able to interoperate with one another. This will inevitably restrict choice and increase consumer confusion. For the wireless home networking option to gain broad acceptance it is necessary that consumers not be required to comprehend interoperability and coexistence issues. It might seem natural to WLAN vendors coming from the enterprise market that there will be competition between technologies. While this approach may be acceptable for the commercial segment where there are company-wide technology adoption decisions and technical support resources, it is not so for the residential market. The appeal of wireless home networking is dramatically limited if there are incompatibility issues, especially when consumers are expected to pay a premium for WLAN solutions.
Equally important is the concern over the coexistence of all these technologies within one frequency band. Though the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band is relatively unused, unlike the 900 MHz band, this will change with multiple technologies utilizing the same band for networking in the future. Current concerns about microwave oven signals in this band will pale in comparison to what may lie ahead. Though the competing technologies should not completely neutralize one another’s radio communication it would make throughput unreliable given that significant degradation is expected. This is particularly problematic when carrying streaming video signals. The key players in the industry need to really have a constructive discussion as to the extent promoting multiple wireless home networking technologies will inhibit mass adoption. If alternatives are to exist then at the very least there need to be guidelines adopted to facilitate a more harmonious coexistence of the various wireless technology offerings.
Table: Wireless Technologies
Technology |
Nature of Technology |
Max. Raw Data Rates (Claimed) |
Primary Applications |
Primary Market |
| Alation’s HomeCast Open Protocol | Proprietary |
1 Mbps |
Data |
Residential |
| HomeRF ‘s SWAP 1.0 | Industry Consortium |
2 Mbps |
Voice, Data |
Residential |
| IEEE 802.11 (1997) | Open Standard |
2 Mbps |
Data |
Enterprise |
| IEEE 802.11 (1999 Revision) | Open Standard |
11 Mbps |
Data, Video |
Enterprise |
| Proxim’s Symphony | Proprietary |
1.6 Mbps |
Data |
Residential |
| ShareWave’s Digital Wireless | Proprietary |
4 Mbps |
Data, Video |
Residential |
| WebGear’s Aviator | Proprietary |
1 Mbps |
Data |
Residential |
Allied Business Intelligence, Inc. is an Oyster Bay, NY-based technology research think-tank specializing in communications and emerging technology markets. ABI publishes strategic research on the broadband, wireless, electronics, automation, energy and transportation industries. Details of these studies can be found at www.alliedworld.com . Or call 516-624-3113 for more info.
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