Articles

• The Connected Life: Beyond the Home Office, Into the Living Room

  Type: Technology Brief
  Jonathan Gaw
  Report Date: January 2009
  

  Introduction

  Like the personal computer in the 1980s and the Internet in the 1990s, today's home network is blossoming into a fundamental element of our daily lives, evolving from a tool confined to a narrow set of applications centered on the PC, to an integral entertainment and lifestyle component. Now, the home network delivers a broad array of content and services to be accessed by a variety of devices throughout the home and over the Internet.

  By the end of 2008 more than 42 million households in the U.S. owned a home network, representing two-thirds of households with a broadband Internet connection. One-third of households with a home network already use them for some type of non- PC application, such as online gaming with a video game console or streaming digital music to their home entertainment system. Both the penetration of home networks and the use of those networks for multimedia applications will only increase in the coming years.

  One-quarter of the devices on home networks worldwide focus on entertainment applications. Four years from now, nearly half of all devices on home networks will be centered on entertainment.

  The drive towards the Connected Life enabled by the home network and other critical technologies comes from the "network effect." The home network increases the value of every device and piece of content in the same way that the Internet makes every computer more powerful: it connects everything together. For example, a digital picture stored on a personal computer has value when a person views it on their computer monitor. But its value increases dramatically when it can be streamed to any television in the home or to any other networked device around the world. Similarly, the home network increases the value of the home entertainment system by enabling it to reach the largest library of content: the Internet.

  Technological innovations are pushing the market for networked entertainment applications. Additionally, consumer demand for greater control over their digital content is pulling the market. As consumers collect more and more music for their MP3 players and pictures from their digital cameras, they need tools to access, manage and preserve them. Consumer electronics, PC companies, and networking manufacturers have invested heavily in developing a more user-friendly experience, focusing on ease-of-use, reliability, and design.

  Moving Beyond Data Networking

  Existing networking technologies coupled with online services make just about any home device or appliance capable of joining the home network. The fabled networked-refrigerator application may exist on the distant horizon, but more compelling use-cases are available now at mainstream prices with the ease-of-use and reliability that consumers demand.

  Entertainment
  During much of this decade, consumer electronics makers have been developing networked entertainment solutions. Early attempts to penetrate the mainstream market fell short on multiple levels: inadequate and unreliable networking technology, incomprehensible installation processes, poorly designed software and hardware interfaces, and a lack of Web services and content for the devices.

  Thanks to years of accumulated experience, today's networked entertainment solutions stand a world apart. They go beyond the device itself to integrate online services. This opens up the device to the panoply of content available on the Internet.
  - Advertising supported services such as Internet radio stations
  - Subscription services such as Netflix.com
  - Downloaded paid content from the likes of Amazon.com and Blockbuster
  - User-generated content services such as YouTube and Flickr
  

  As those online services mature, the value of networked entertainment grows, just as the value of our PCs and broadband connections have increased with the flourishing of the Web ecosystem. Devices currently in the market, including digital media adapters, networked DVD and Blu-ray players, and networked receivers give TVs and home entertainment centers a new role by bringing them online.

  Just as PCs take on new roles with every new Web service that launches, networked entertainment devices evolve with every new online service that they access. Networked consumer electronics have begun to co-opt the adaptability of the PC while preserving a focus on entertainment.

  Also, home networking technologies, both wired and wireless, have made great strides in the last five years. Today's wireless networking equipment can reliably transmit content from the Internet or a PC to televisions and home entertainment systems throughout the home. Online and PC-based music can be streamed wirelessly to virtually any corner of the house with extremely high reliability, while wireless networks can typically handle DVD-quality video with ease. Wired networking technologies can deliver digital content over the home's existing power lines and coaxial cables to any outlet in the home.

  Mobile Communications Merge with the Home
  In an increasingly mobile world, consumers' communications devices seamlessly connect to the home network and the assets on it, allowing users to access their content wherever they go. At the same time, mobile devices control other gadgets on the network and take advantage of the broadband connection to access the Internet for music and video services as well as voice.

  To address the need to stay connected and engaged through social networking services, consumers increasingly demand Wi-Fi capabilities from their mobile devices, including portable media players and mobile phones. The ability for every person to mass communicate has led to demand for solutions that make transmitting and receiving those communications easy and ubiquitous. The home network has become a central part of that nascent movement.

  The home network also plays a role in the trend away from traditional landline telephone service. While reducing cost is a strong motivator for dropping the landline, consumers also find little reason to draw a distinction between "mobile" and "home." As a result, the traditional landline phone becomes redundant. That transition away from the landline has led to a demand for better in-home service from mobile phone providers, including a more diverse set of devices that better replicate the multihandset experience that consumers enjoy with traditional landline service.

  Device manufacturers are stepping up on both accounts. Mobile phone service providers are experimenting with femtocells, small devices that sit on the home network and seamlessly transmit mobile phone conversations over the Internet. Other device manufacturers have introduced phone systems that integrate traditional cordless phone technology with mobile phone services, allowing consumers to have handsets operating on the same mobile phone line in several rooms of the house.

  Consumers increasingly want remote access to their digital assets back home, such as vital data files for productivity purposes or videos recorded from a television service that a road warrior can access while away. The home network provides the gateway for that remote access in a secure and reliable fashion.

  PC Networking
  While the center of the Connected Life gravitates towards entertainment, PC networking remains the primary use of home networks. The first incarnation of home networks had users sharing broadband connections, surfing the Web wirelessly, and, occasionally, sharing files and printers among computers. The second, current incarnation of home networks takes the PC applications to a new level, from simple access to total management.

  New networked solutions in the home give users the security and flexibility necessary in a world that requires the assurance and extensibility of digital assets. Devices like the Media Hub from Cisco, package critical management tools such as backup and versioning. They also enable remote access to content, centralize storage of content, and create a center for digital media and applications to be used by other devices in the home.

  This merging of PC and entertainment applications through solutions like the Media Hub is a common trend in home networking and in line with the arc of the Connected Life, where the PC and entertainment are increasingly blending together.

  Building the Market

  Consumers have repeatedly expressed interest in networked entertainment applications and advanced networked communications and productivity solutions. However, only recently has the market evolved to where advanced home networking applications can come to the fore. Raising the Connected Life market to its full potential requires advances on multiple fronts.

  Consumer Education
  Before home networking technologies became mainstream among consumers with home broadband access, the home network concept was alien to many. When early broadband subscribers were asked if they would be interested in purchasing a home network, more than two-thirds said no, with more than 80% of those saying that they had no use for one. Asked, however, if they were interested in home networking applications such as sharing a broadband connection among two or more PCs or surfing the Internet wirelessly on their laptop computer, over half expressed high interest in at least one home networking application.

  The same applies to the Connected Life applications. Most consumers have little interest in connecting their home entertainment centers or televisions to their home network. When asked if they would be interested in viewing digital pictures stored on their PC via their television, however, nearly half of broadband subscribers say they would.

  It is a common refrain that it takes several years for consumers to grasp the true impact of a new technology, and much of that is related to the pace of education, not the technology itself.

  The home networking technologies, services and devices already in place can deliver on the Connected Life potential. Home networks have already made a significant imprint in households as a PC-centered tool. The industry now needs to highlight the capacity of home networks in the entertainment, communications and other lifestyle areas.

  Ease-of-Use and Reliability
  Consumers generally view their home networks as part of the computing world, complex and prone to disruption, while their televisions and DVD players reliably come to life with the push of a button.

  Today's home networking equipment is ready to cross that transom from the home office to the living room by addressing head-on the ease-of-use and reliability issues. Configuring a wireless connection to a home network no longer requires inputting a lengthy and random series of numbers and letters or penetrating computer jargon seemingly intent on excluding mainstream users. Now, home networking equipment not only enables push-button simplicity for devices joining a home network, it also diagnoses and repairs problems on the network.

  The importance of reliability and ease-of-use cannot be overstated. In the infancy of home networking, the PC set the bar for ease of use. That is, the bar wasn't set very high. But as home networking moves into the living room, the television sets a much higher bar for reliability and ease-of-use, and consumers watching a movie have little patience for interruptions in their entertainment experience.

  Design
  Home networking devices have evolved so that not only do their features match those in the living room, but so do their interfaces, usability, and form relationships. In other words, home networks have begun to emphasize "home" and play down the "network."

  Gone are the unsightly arrays of antennas that evoked images of arachnids, the color palettes that screamed "computer," and the boxy shapes that emphasized the device's role in productivity and work. Instead, we now have smooth, curved devices that hint at speed and excitement, much like a race car, while high-gloss dark colors allow them to visually conform to the rest of the home entertainment stack.

  The software interfaces of networked entertainment products have also evolved. Device manufacturers have replaced the folder-directory hierarchy common in the computer world with a drill-down framework similar to those found on portable media players. But even those interfaces will eventually give way to more personalized experiences that organize choices based on the user's behavior and recommendations from friends and online services.

  Networked entertainment devices need to balance the aesthetics of the incumbent home entertainment system with the interfaces that allow a user to discover the value and uniqueness of networking applications.

  Challenges

  Even as one-third of home network households in the U.S. now have some kind of non-PC device on the network, some challenges remain in expanding the penetration of networked entertainment applications.

  Making it all work together. Consumers face an unwieldy patchwork of schemes that protect, manage, and license content, which inhibits them from enjoying the content on all their devices in the home. Similarly, different device manufacturers each pursue their own agenda, occasionally confounding consumers who implement networks with multiple brands of devices. Fortunately for consumers, solutions such as DLNA and UPnP are starting to address these issues. Finding ways to further remove content protection barriers will also help by making content usable on all devices.

  Continued bullet-proofing of the technology. The real-world performance of networking technologies rarely fully live up to the claims made on the box, which are based on ideal environments. Wireless network performance is hindered by certain home construction types, and coax and powerline networks can fail in older homes. In particular, streaming high-definition video continues to be a weak point for mainstream implementations of wireless home networking, with coax and powerline networking offering the best hope of delivering consistently on that application. The industry needs to continue to improve networking technologies and alternative technologies to make new multimedia applications easily accessible.

  Making it easy and understandable. Mainstream consumer behavior evolves slowly, and it takes time for new concepts such as networked entertainment to be understood and implemented. Industry participants need to help the average consumer. Service providers, for example, have introduced mainstream users to new entertainment concepts, such as the digital video recorder, by subsidizing their adoption and installing the devices. They will need to reprise that role with networked entertainment. Device manufacturers must continue to work on software and hardware interfaces to bring networked entertainment applications more in line with consumer expectations of a living room experience, and work with retailers to step up their educational efforts.

  Conclusion

  Enabled by technologies such as home networking, the industry sits on the cusp of a breakthrough in home entertainment on par with the advent of cable television that brought a bounty of television choices to the home. We have all of the key technologies necessary to bring the Connected Life concept to fruition in the U.S., and roadmaps for addressing the residual technological challenges are in place. The remaining significant hurdles lie in the execution of networked entertainment solutions. More than 42 million U.S. households have already purchased a home network, taking one of the biggest steps towards the Connected Life. Consumers already use online services for a cornucopia of entertainment, communications and lifestyle applications. Digital devices and content pervade modern life. The Connected Life ties together those developments while continuing the on-going digital revolution of the past three decades.

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• Cisco's New Linksys Router (WRT610N) Packs a Punch with Simultaneous Dual-N Band Wireless

  Type: Product Intelligence Report
  Analyst: B. McGregor
  Report Date: July 08, 2008
  Module: Digital Home - U.S.
  

  The Linksys by Cisco Simultaneous Dual-N Band Wireless Router (WRT610N) is competitive, because it effectively helps consumers using multiple broadband connected devices in the home manage their available bandwidth efficiently. WRT610N operates with two radio channels, 5GHz and 2.4GHz spectrums, with the unique function running both channels simultaneously. The latest WiFi Alliance specification 802.11n draft enables this new router to deliver faster speeds up to 12 times that of the 802.11g standard. Linksys recommends entertainment devices such as personal video recorders, audio players, Media Center Extenders, and gaming consoles to be connected to the 5GHz band. In addition, 5GHz works best to stream high-definition (HD) content wirelessly with less electrical interference across the home. The 2.4GHz band works well with legacy devices and common low-bandwidth data applications for PCs, printers, and storage hard drives. The WRT610N is touted as "multimedia-friendly" since it possesses the technology to automatically manage home networking traffic for maximum performance. This provides HD video applications the higher bandwidth required with a dual-channel design. The company includes new router set-up software called Linksys Easy Link Advisor (LELA) to help WRT610N users manage all the devices connected to the router. LELA offers a flash video-based installation guide designed to be user-friendly for even the tech novice. The software also helps ensure the wireless router is secured from outsiders attempting to piggyback on to its broadband connection with a SPI firewall and encryption.

  While the new WRT610N can do some innovative things with its simultaneous Dual-N Band Wireless technology, it is not enough to provoke the majority of consumers to switch from their current home networking equipment. The new Linksys router will be a benefit to those few who desire a stable home networking solution with better quality for streaming video wirelessly in HD. Only the most sophisticated home entertainment solutions attempt to stream video wirelessly, with the primary application for WiFi still being basic laptop Internet connectivity. Cisco still needs to drop the Linksys brand fully and gear up to market its consumer class of products adequately as strictly Cisco with a solid marketing campaign. The 2003 $480 million acquisition of Linksys, a leading player in the home networking and small business router market segment, demonstrated Cisco's willingness to use its cash assets to enter the consumer electronics market that it views as key for creating strategic solution sets. Yet right now, Apple is a more recognized brand among digital home consumers and is currently better positioned in the home entertainment market niche to sell its advanced home networking devices such as its AirPort Express and AirPort Extreme. The price tag for WRT610N of $199 is a bit too high to attract average consumers to upgrade, since the primary benefit of better wireless HD video transmission is still in the early adopter stages. Cisco could see a jump in sales of its new routers with resale partnerships with major broadband service providers such as Verizon and its ultra-fast FiOS service.

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• Cisco/Linksys Acquires Pure Networks: The Beginning of Home Network 2.0

  Author: Michael Wolf | Research Director, Digital Home

  On July 23rd, Cisco announced a definitive agreement to acquire Pure Networks. The acquisition brings to Cisco/Linksys a company that has been a leader in what has been a small but important category: software for the management of consumer home networks. While in dollar terms this is a fairly insignificant acquisition, ABI Research believes that this is an indication of a much larger strategic push for Cisco as they continue to attempt to help move the industry along from the Wild West days of the home network to one in which centrally managed, mixed-device multimedia networks with seamless access to both local and cloud based services are more the norm than the futuristic exception.

  Ending the Wild West Days
  Over the past five to six years, the digital home industry has been struggling to move from a Wild West type of environment to one where the digital home is one that can be centrally managed by both the consumer as well as by the service and web services provider. This transition has been happening on a number of fronts, at the core connectivity and discovery standards level (with Universal Plug and Play, DLNA and other discovery based protocols), at the broadband access and remote management level (including the largely defunct CableHome effort by CableLabs and the more successful TR-69 from the DSL Forum), and finally at the vendor level, as hardware and software vendors have worked to integrate management capabilities to allow both consumers and service providers to manage and troubleshoot the home network.
  These efforts have resulted in some progress, as many consumer retail and service provider CPEs have integrated UPnP and TR-69 capabilities, which allow for fairly straightforward home network discovery and for some levels of remote management by the service provider. At the same time, efforts to transition the data network in the home toward mixed-device, data/voice/ entertainment-based networks has been slow going, and those that are installed today are largely done using expensive equipment in complex architectures, such as the FiOS-based MoCA networks video and home networks.

  HNAP
  For its part, Cisco/Linksys has been aware for some time of the need to create software that would allow consumers to easily connect, manage, and troubleshoot their home networks. To this end, they created Linksys Easylink Adviser (or LELA), which has been shipping with their routers for a few years now, and over the past year have used the Pure Networks base platform for the LELA software. The company also licenses HNAP, or Home Network Administration Protocol, from Pure Networks. With this acquisition, Cisco/Linksys brings the rights to the HNAP protocol in house.

  What is HNAP? It is a SOAP-based protocol that can be integrated into devices to allow for remote management. If this sounds similar to another standard – in particular Universal Plug and Play – that's because it is. On one hand, HNAP is competitive in that it is a management protocol for networked devices, which is what UPnP is. However, while UPnP is, to some extent, a universally accepted standard for the home network management space, there are some shortcomings of the standard such as security. HNAP, while not as universally used at UPnP, has more capabilities in managing devices such as multi-radio routers, NAS devices, as well as overall home central home network management.

  Cisco/Linksys has indicated that they will keep the HNAP protocol on an open-licensing model. The tricky part here will be convincing its competitors to license technology from it. However, while vendors such as Netgear (who has implemented HNAP in some routers such as the KWGR614) may think twice from licensing technology from Linksys, if they see an opportunity to implement low-cost and easily licensable software that could accelerate the move toward more easily managed networks, they may ultimately put aside competitive concerns.

  Moving to Home Network 2.0
  One of the most interesting reasons that Cisco put forth for the acquisition of Pure is the intention to layer applications on top of its core management software. The vision here is one where Pure Networks' Network Magic management software (and LELA) is a launching point for many of the forthcoming Web services that will be coming over the Web into the home. Cisco believes that at some point there needs to be virtualization of services beyond single PCs, and by both combining the management capabilities of HNAP into the router and by having a centralized console for the management of the network and associated services in LELA, the company will be able to offer a number of cross-home web and content services.

  The first effort here will be a parental control application that is virtualized at the home network level. Cisco/Linksys sees the ability to do content virtualization, and they are even talking today with music and video content companies to enable content to be easily accessible across devices. We see this as a piece of the broader uber-trend towards centralized content management – both in-home and cloud based – and with this acquisition of Pure, Cisco/Linksys thinks that it may have acquired one of the critical pieces of moving toward this vision.

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