Enabling the Networked Home The Coactive Connector® Residential Gateway Overview The Networked Home has become recognized as the next forefront of the networking revolution, where consumer technology and Internet infrastructure intersect to change the way we lead our lives. Much attention has been focused on the building blocks of this new world: Internet appliances, wireless devices, and home networking technologies. Recent attention has turned to the building block at the heart of the Networked Home: the residential gateway. As its centrality is acknowledged, the residential gateway has engendered a great deal of discussion and questions. Which technologies will it support? Where will it sit in the home? What services will it enable? Who will bring these services to the mass market? This white paper outlines a system solution that uses the residential gateway to deliver viable e-services to the Networked Home today. This solution is based upon Coactive Networks™ experience as the first company to deliver a full-service residential gateway, and the first company to deploy these consumer e-services to the mass market. The Networked Home At the highest level, the residential gateway makes the Networked Home possible by providing a central point of connectivity between in-home devices and a wide-area Internet access network. It allows in-home devices to access information from the Internet, and it allows the consumer to access home information from virtually anywhere.
Accessing data from the Internet is a straightforward proposition -- from a PC at work, an airport kiosk, an Internet café, or a wireless phone. There are also several ways for the Internet to connect to homes -- predominantly dial-up modem today, with high-speed broadband options such as DSL, cable modem, and wireless undergoing aggressive deployments. Less standard and familiar, however, are the means for establishing connections within the home and then extending those connections outside the home. This is the realm of the residential gateway. Home Networks While there are many ways to classify home networks, the most important distinction is that different technologies are designed for different services: data, entertainment (audio/video), and control. Home data networks, like those in an office environment, provide high-speed connectivity for computers. Entertainment networks allow the streaming of audio and video from one location to another within the home. And home control networks let devices such as thermostats, light switches, security systems, and home appliances talk to each other and to the Internet. In new homes, all of these networks are often simply built into the walls, using twisted pair wiring. In already-built homes, networking technologies either use existing wiring, such as telephone or electrical wires, or they transmit data wirelessly, using an antenna.
The Residential Gateway Although home networking technologies can be used in a variety of ways, the Networked Home vision goes far beyond linking one PC to another or to the family printer. The Connected Home is about using this technology to enable a new class of e-services by connecting the Internet to every device and appliance in the home. The central product powering these e-services is the residential gateway. The Coactive Connector® residential gateway uses every type of existing home wiring to provide maximum flexibility in reaching all these devices and appliances. By acting as a hub, router, logger, and controller, all rolled into one inexpensive networking product, the Coactive Connector is able to deliver an amazingly wide range of services.
Telemetry E-Serv