Chapter 12. Customer Premises Networking

12.1 Home Network Media

12.2 Inside Telephone Wiring and ADSL

12.2.1 In-line Filter (Microfilter)

12.2.2 Inside Wire

12.2.3 Dial-up Alarm Systems and ADSL

12.3 Inside Telephone Wire-based Home Networks

12.4 Coax Cable-based Home Networks

12.5 AC Power Wiring-based Home Networks

12.6 Dedicated Data Home Networks

12.7 Radio LAN Home Networks

12.7.1 IEEE 802.11, 802.11b, and Other 802.11 Wireless LANs

12.7.2 HIPERLAN

12.7.3 HomeRF

12.7.4 Bluetooth

12.8 Infrared Home Networks

One end of each DSL connects to the customer premises network. The premises may be a business office in a commercial building, a business office in a home, a residential consumer's home, a unit in an apartment building, or even a public kiosk located in a shopping mall. In some cases, the customer premises network is simply the phone line connected directly to a PCI card installed within a personal computer (PC), or a phone line connected to a DSL modem with a 10BASE-T Ethernet interface to a single PC.

Large business installations may consist of one or more DSLs connecting to a router with firewall functions that then connect to an Ethernet local area network (LAN). IEEE 802.3 (CSMA/CD 10BASE-T), Fast Ethernet (100bT), Gigabit Ethernet, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet LANs provide access for many PCs and servers to access the Internet or an intranet via the router. Ethernet LANs are thoroughly addressed in other books, ^[1] so this book focuses on customer premises networks for residential consumers, small business offices, and home offices.

^[1] Also see www.ieee802.org.

The home provides the opportunity of a huge potential market with the challenges of demanding very-low-cost, self-installation by a novice home owner, and serving many of the following applications:

PCs, information appliances, printers, scanners , digital camera
Internet access : DSL, cable modem, satellite dish, wireless
Video : TVs, cable, satellite dish, VCR, DVD player, video camera
Audio : stereo, CD recorder/player, MP3 recorder/player, radio, AC3
Game machines
Intercom, baby monitor, doorbell
Surveillance camera
Telephones : wired and wireless, facsimile , answering machine, caller ID ^[2]

^[2] Note that voice may include voice-over IP that is networked as data, in addition to traditional voice conveyed as an analog signal.
Voice- band modems
Alarm : fire, intrusion, water, freeze, carbon monoxide, power loss, medical
HVAC (heat, ventilation , air conditioning) control
Energy management (utility peak load control), vacation setting
Telemetry : gas, water, power meter reading
Control : lights, window covering, garage door, yard-watering, pool, door locks
Appliances (e.g., refrigerator door open , remote diagnosis of dishwasher trouble)
Exercise machines
Clocks (synchronize all clocks)
Community alert : weather, pollution, flood, fire, water restriction
Home weather station
Vehicles and lawn mower

George Jetson (the futuristic cartoon character) might have accessed his personal weather station from his lawn mower, but in the real world there is one leading application for mass-market home data networking: high-speed Internet access by multiple devices within the home. A market study conducted by Intel in 1998 found that 86 percent of homes with two or more PCs are connected to the Internet. There are about 20 million multi-PC homes in North America. Connecting only one PC to the Internet soon leads to the desire to connect the remaining PCs or information appliances to the Internet. Once the home data network is present, other applications, such as house-wide stereo and lighting control, will follow. Other leading applications for data networking in the home are printer and file sharing. An example of file sharing is access of an address list stored on one PC from another information appliance in the home. File sharing is also useful for audio and video: a family collection of CDs, MP3s, and videos accessible by every stereo and TV in the house. With a wireless LAN, information appliances may be located anywhere within the home and even outside near the home (such as a pool-side laptop computer to visit a baseball team's Web site while listening to a game on radio).

In the ultimate scenario, multimode information appliances could use the home network to access multiple wide area networks (WANs): a satellite dish for video, DSL for the Internet, and the public telephone network for phone calls. The term information appliance applies to any device that has intelligence (an embedded microcomputer/controller) and is connected to the home network. Examples of information appliances are PCs, a kitchen display/keyboard terminal, servers, printers, home alarm system, and a garage door opener (if connected to the home network). A device called a residential gateway or an IAD (integrated access device) interfaces to the DSL, cable modem, or satellite dish on the WAN side, and the home LAN (e.g., HomePNA [Home Phoneline Network Alliance], 10baseT, 802.11b wireless LAN) on the premises side.

There have been many attempts by various companies and consortia to create a mass-market, all-purpose home network that does everything from controlling light dimmers to distributing video throughout the home. Thus far, the universal home network has not replaced the status quo using separate ad hoc home networks dedicated for each application: video (coax), telephone (twisted pair), intercom (separate twisted pair), security alarm (often yet another separate set of wires), light control (signals modulated over inside power wires, such as X10), and data (dedicated wires for10baseT). It is not clear if there ever will be an ideal unified home network for all applications, but some degree of integration is likely. The recent development of the Konnex standard in Europe is an encouraging attempt at a unified home networking standard.

Top