• Source: Home network

A home network or home area network (HAN) is a type of computer network that facilitates communication among devices within the close vicinity of a home. Devices capable of participating in this network, for example, smart devices such as network printers and handheld mobile computers, often gain enhanced emergent capabilities through their ability to interact. These additional capabilities can be used to increase the quality of life inside the home in a variety of ways, such as automation of repetitive tasks, increased personal productivity, enhanced home security, and easier access to entertainment.




Origin


IPv4 address exhaustion has forced most Internet service providers to grant only a single WAN-facing IP address for each residential account. Multiple devices within a residence or small office are provisioned with internet access by establishing a local area network (LAN) for the local devices with IP addresses reserved for private networks. A network router is configured with the provider's IP address on the WAN interface, which is shared among all devices in the LAN by network address translation.




Infrastructure devices



Certain devices on a home network are primarily concerned with enabling or supporting the communications of the kinds of end devices home-dwellers more directly interact with. Unlike their data center counterparts, these "networking" devices are compact and passively cooled, aiming to be as hands-off and non-obtrusive as possible:

A gateway establishes physical and data link layer connectivity to a WAN over a service provider's native telecommunications infrastructure. Such devices typically contain a cable, DSL, or optical modem bound to a network interface controller for Ethernet. Routers are often incorporated into these devices for additional convenience.
A router establishes network layer connectivity between a WAN and the home network. It also performs the key function of network address translation that allows independently addressed devices within the same home network to establish transport layer connections across the WAN from a single, outward-facing WAN IP address. These devices often come with an integrated wireless access point and 4-port Ethernet switch.
A network switch is used to allow devices on the home network to talk to one another via Ethernet. While the needs of most home networks are satisfied with the built-in wireless and/or switching capabilities of their router, some situations require the addition of a separate switch with advanced capabilities. For example:
A typical home router has 4 to 6 Ethernet LAN ports, so a router's switching capacity could be exceeded.
A network device might require a non-standard port feature such as power over Ethernet (PoE). (IP cameras and IP phones)
A wireless access point is required for connecting wireless devices to a network. When a router includes this device, it is referred to as a wireless router.
A home automation or smart home controller acts as a gateway and router for low-power wireless networks of simple, non-data-intensive devices such as light bulbs and locks.
A network bridge binds two different network interfaces to each other, often in order to grant a wired-only device access to a wireless network medium.




Physical connectivity and protocols



Home networks can use either wired or wireless technologies to connect endpoints. Wireless is the predominant option in homes due to the ease of installation, lack of unsightly cables, and network performance characteristics sufficient for residential activities.




= Wireless

=



Wireless LAN


One of the most common ways of creating a home network is by using wireless radio signal technology; the 802.11 network as certified by the IEEE. Most wireless-capable residential devices operate at a frequency of 2.4 GHz under 802.11b and 802.11g or 5 GHz under 802.11a. Some home networking devices operate in both radio-band signals and fall within the 802.11n or 802.11ac standards. Wi-Fi is a marketing and compliance certification for IEEE 802.11 technologies. The Wi-Fi Alliance has tested compliant products, and certifies them for interoperability.



Wireless PAN


Low power, close range communication based on IEEE 802.15 standards has a strong presence in homes. Bluetooth continues to be the technology of choice for most wireless accessories such as keyboards, mice, headsets, and game controllers. These connections are often established in a transient, ad-hoc manner and are not thought of as permanent residents of a home network.



Low-rate wireless PAN


A "low-rate" version of the original WPAN protocol was used as the basis of Zigbee. Despite originally being conceived as a standard for low power machine-to-machine communication in industrial environments, the technology has been found to be well suited for integration into embedded "Smart Home" offerings that are expected to run on battery for extended periods of time. Zigbee utilizes [10002000

associated with traditional WPAN in order to establish a single network of addressable devices spread across the entire building. Z-Wave is an additional standard also built on 802.15.4, that was developed specifically with the needs of home automation device makers in mind.




= Twisted pair cables

=

Most wired network infrastructures found in homes utilize Category 5 or Category 6 twisted pair cabling with RJ45 compatible terminations. This medium provides physical connectivity between the Ethernet interfaces present on a large number of residential IP-aware devices. Depending on the grade of cable and quality of installation, speeds of up to 10 Mbit/s, 100 Mbit/s, 1 Gbit/s, or 10 Gbit/s are supported.




= Fiber optics

=

Some neighborhoods support running fiber optic cables running directly into homes. This enables service providers to offer internet services with much higher bandwidth and/or lower latency characteristics associated with end-to-end optical signaling.




= Telephone wires

=
VDSL and VDSL2
HomePNA support up to 160 Mbit/s




= Coaxial cables

=
The following standards allow devices to communicate over coaxial cables, which are frequently installed to support multiple television sets throughout homes.

DOCSIS
The Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) standard can achieve up to 1.5 Gbit/s
CWave
HomePNA support up to 320 Mbit/s




= Power lines

=

The ITU-T G.hn and IEEE Powerline standard, which provide high-speed (up to 1 Gbit/s) local area networking over existing home wiring, are examples of home networking technology designed specifically for IPTV delivery. Recently, the IEEE passed proposal P1901 which grounded a standard within the Market for wireline products produced and sold by companies that are part of the HomePlug Alliance. The IEEE is continuously working to push for P1901 to be completely recognized worldwide as the sole standard for all future products that are produced for Home Networking.

HomePlug and HomePNA are associated standards
Universal Powerline Association




Endpoint devices and services


Traditionally, data-centric equipment such as computers and media players have been the primary tenants of a home network. However, due to the lowering cost of computing and the ubiquity of smartphone usage, many traditionally non-networked home equipment categories now include new variants capable of control or remote monitoring through an app on a smartphone. Newer startups and established home equipment manufacturers alike have begun to offer these products as part of a "Smart" or "Intelligent" or "Connected Home" portfolio. The control and/or monitoring interfaces for these products can be accessed through proprietary smartphone applications specific to that product line.




= General purpose

=
Personal computers such as desktops, laptops, netbooks, and tablets
A network attached storage (NAS) device can be easily accessed via the CIFS or NFS protocols for general storage or for backup purposes.
A print server can be used to share any directly connected printers with other computers on the network.
IP phones or smartphones (when connected via Wi-Fi) utilizing VoIP technologies




= Entertainment

=
Smart speakers
Television: Some new TVs and DVRs include integrated WiFi connectivity which allows the user to access services such as Netflix and YouTube.
Home audio: Digital audio players, and stereo systems with network connectivity can allow a user to easily access their music library, often using Bonjour to discover and interface with an instance of iTunes running on a remote PC.
Gaming: Video game consoles rely on connectivity to the home network to enable a significant portion of their overall features, such as the multiplayer in games, social network integration, ability to purchase or demo new games, and receive software updates. Recent consoles have begun more aggressively pursuing the role of the sole entertainment and media hub of the home.
DLNA is a common protocol used for interoperability between networked media-centric devices in the home.
Some older entertainment devices may not feature the appropriate network interfaces required for home network connectivity. In some situations, USB dongles and PCI Network Interface Cards are available as accessories that enable this functionality.




= Lighting

=

"Connected" light bulbs such as Lifx, Philips Hue, Samsung Smart Bulb, GE Link
Zigbee Light Link is the open standards protocol used by current major "Connected" light bulb vendors




= Home security and access control

=
Access control: Plume
Security alarms: iSmartAlarm
Garage door and gate openers: Liftmaster MyQ, GoGogate




= Environmental monitoring and conditioning

=
HVAC: Nest Learning Thermostat
Smoke/CO detectors: Nest Protect




= Cloud services

=

The convenience, availability, and reliability of externally managed cloud computing resources continues to become an appealing choice for many home-dwellers without interest or experience in IT. For these individuals, the subscription fees and/or privacy risks associated with such services are often perceived as lower cost than having to configure and maintain similar facilities within a home network. In such situations, local services along with the devices maintaining them are replaced by those in an external data center and made accessible to the home-dweller's computing devices via a WAN connection.




Network management






= Network Layer Configuration

=
DHCP is used to assign internal IP addresses to members of a home network. A DHCP server typically runs on the router with end devices as its clients. The router itself is a client of the external DHCP servers owned by the internet service provider. All DHCP clients request configuration settings using the DHCP protocol in order to acquire their IP address, a default route and one or more DNS server addresses. Once the client implements these settings, it will be able to communicate on that internet.




= Embedded devices

=
Small standalone embedded home network devices typically require remote configuration from a PC on the same network. For example, broadband modems are often configured through a web browser running on a PC in the same network. These devices usually use a minimal Linux distribution with a lightweight HTTP server running in the background to allow the user to conveniently modify system variables from a GUI rendered in their browser. These pages use HTML forms extensively and make attempts to offer styled, visually appealing views that are also descriptive and easy to use.




= Apple ecosystem devices

=

Apple devices aim to make networking as hidden and automatic as possible, utilizing a zero-configuration networking protocol called Bonjour embedded within their otherwise proprietary line of software and hardware products.




= Microsoft ecosystem devices

=
Microsoft offers simple access control features built into their Windows operating system. Homegroup is a feature that allows shared disk access, shared printer access and shared scanner access among all computers and users (typically family members) in a home, in a similar fashion as in a small office workgroup, e.g., by means of distributed peer-to-peer networking (without a central server). Additionally, a home server may be added for increased functionality. The Windows HomeGroup feature was introduced with Microsoft Windows 7 in order to simplify file sharing in residences. All users (typically all family members), except guest accounts, may access any shared library on any computer that is connected to the home group. Passwords are not required from the family members during logon. Instead, secure file sharing is possible by means of a temporary password that is used when adding a computer to the HomeGroup.




Common issues and concerns






= Wireless signal loss

=
The wireless signal strength of the standard residential wireless router may not be powerful enough to cover the entire house or may not be able to get through to all floors of multiple floor residences. In such situations, the installation of one or more wireless repeaters may be necessary.




= "Leaky" Wi-Fi

=
Wi-Fi often extends beyond the boundaries of a home and can create coverage where it is least wanted, offering a channel through which non-residents could compromise a system and retrieve personal data. To prevent this it is usually sufficient to enforce the use of authentication, encryption, or VPN that requires a password for network connectivity.
However new Wi-Fi standards working at 60 GHz, such as 802.11ad, enable confidence that the LAN will not trespass physical barriers, as at such frequencies a simple wall would attenuate the signal considerably.




= Electrical grid noise

=
For home networks relying on powerline communication technology, how to deal with electrical noise injected into the system from standard household appliances remains the largest challenge. Whenever any appliance is turned on or turned off it creates noise that could possibly disrupt data transfer through the wiring. IEEE products that are certified to be HomePlug 1.0 compliant have been engineered to no longer interfere with, or receive interference from other devices plugged into the same home's electrical grid.




= Administration

=
The administration of proliferating devices and software in home networks, and the growing amount of private data, is fast becoming an issue by itself. Keeping overview, applying without delay software updates and security patches, keeping juniors internet use within safe boundaries, structuring of storage and access levels for private files and other data, data backups, detection and cleaning of any infections, operating virtual private networks for easy access to resources in the home network when away, etc.. Such things are all issues that require attention and planned careful work in order to provide a secure, resilient, and stable home network easy to use for all members of the household and their guests.




See also


Access control
Computer security software
Data backup
Encryption
Firewall (computing)
Home automation
Home server
Indoor positioning system (IPS)
Matter
Network security
Smart, connected products
Software update
Virtual assistant




References






External links


WikiBooks:Transferring Data between Standard Dial-Up Modems
Home Net WG of the IETF
• Source: @Home Network

@Home Network was a high-speed cable Internet service provider from 1996 to 2002. It was founded by Milo Medin, cable companies Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), Comcast, and Cox Communications, and William Randolph Hearst III, who was their first CEO, as a joint venture to produce high-speed cable Internet service through two-way television cable infrastructure. At the company's peak, it provided high-speed Internet service for 4.1 million subscribers in the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and the Benelux nations (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg). The company operated as four joint ventures, three of which were international. In 1999, the company acquired Excite. In 2001 the original US company filed for bankruptcy in the US courts. During the bankruptcy process, the Japanese partner bought the @Home trademark for use in Japan and the Benelux partner bought the @Home trademark for use in Europe.




History



The passing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 enabled cable companies to start offering Internet telephony services to customers.
The company's first VP of engineering and later chief technology officer was Milo Medin, and the company got its start from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
In December 1998, Excite was in merger negotiations with Yahoo! inc in an agreement to purchase the Excite portal for a price between $5.5 billion and $6 billion. On December 19, at Kleiner Perkins prompting, @Home Network's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Thomas Jermoluk met with Excite's chairman and CEO George Bell, according to documents filed with the SEC, and a deal was hashed out for the purchase of Excite and its debt.
On January 19, 1999, @Home Networks acquired the Internet portal Excite. The $6.7 billion merger became one of the largest mergers of two Internet companies ever; the combined entity would marry @Home's profitable high-speed Internet network of @Home and expand its existing Home.com portal with Excite's money-losing search engine and Internet portal. The combined entity's external name became Excite@Home, however the stock symbol and regulatory filing records remained properly known as At Home Corporation (ATHM).
As a side effect of the deal, @Home's chairman and chief executive George Tom Jermoluk (also called T.J. for short) stepped down as chief executive officer but remained chairman of the board, and Excite's former chairman and chief executive George Bell, who was the president of the Excite division of @Home, moved over as chief executive of the new Excite@Home entity.
The new Excite division took the existing @home.com web portal that was provided to service subscribers and merged it with the Excite portal. Along with this was the movement toward personalized web portal content, a concept now commonplace in all Internet portals today.
In just months following the merger, Excite@Home's Excite division purchased iMall for about $425 million in stock. Most significant of these was the purchase of the online greeting card company Blue Mountain Arts, Excite@Home issued 11.2 million shares, worth close to $430 million, and paid $350 million in cash. In addition, Excite paid for sponsorship of Infiniti IndyCar driver Eddie Cheever, Jr., through the 2000 and 2001 Indy racing seasons for an undisclosed amount.
On June 10, 1999, the @Home cable division announced a joint venture with Australia with Cable & Wireless Optus to form a new company, AtHome Network Australia. The projected homes passed for the deal was 2.2 million.
The merger between Excite and @Home fell disastrously short of expectations. The stock which once soared at $128.34 a share in the first quarter of 1999 and had a market cap of $35 billion had fallen to $1 a share by the third quarter of 2001 when the company formally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The new Chief Executive George Bell worked from his home in Massachusetts and the Chief Financial Officer Mark McEachen lived in LA, flying in only once per week to the Bay Area to conduct business. Both executives were part of the former Excite executive team. More significantly, expenses ran far ahead of revenues. The burst of the dot-com bubble in March 2000 and the subsequent collapse of the Internet advertising market further limited the company's prospects by making it harder to raise investor money to keep the company afloat in the absence of retained earnings. By 2001, the company was running out of cash.
On September 21, 2000, George Bell stepped down as chief executive officer and reprised his role as president of the Excite division. The stock was trading at $15.38 a share, a drop of 90% of the company's evaluation during his leadership. On April 23, 2001, Patti S. Hart, the former chief executive officer of Telocity joined Excite@Home as its third CEO and @Home's fourth. In the same announcement, the outgoing chairman George Bell resigned and left the company completely. The news was not good, as the company also reported a first-quarter net loss of $61.6 million, or 15 cents per share, on revenue of $142.8 million compared with a loss of $4.6 million, or 1 cent, on revenue of $138 million in the same period the prior year.

On June 11, 2001, Excite@Home announced that it had raised $100 million in fresh financing from Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co. Part of the deal not widely disclosed was that the loan was repayable immediately if Excite@Home stock was delisted by Nasdaq. The loan, structured as a note convertible into shares of Excite, had an interest rate of zero. The key aspect of the deal was that Promethean gained first dibs on Excite's assets.
By August 20, 2001, @Home fired their auditor firm Ernst & Young, replacing them with PricewaterhouseCoopers. In addition, they received a demand for the immediate repayment of $50 million in debt by bondholders Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co. At the same time, both Cox Cable and Comcast announced that they would separate from the broadband Internet service by Q1 of 2002.
On September 13, 2001, Excite@Home sold Blue Mountain Arts for $35 million to American Greetings, less than 5% of what they had paid less than two years earlier.
On October 1, 2001, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California. The company's remaining 1,350 employees would be laid off over the following months into the first quarter of 2002. As part of the agreement, @Home's national high-speed fiber network access would be sold back to AT&T for $307 million in cash. At Home Liquidating Trust became the successor company to Excite@Home charged with the sale of all assets of the former company.
After the company's demise, the four Excite@Home headquarters buildings at 450 Broadway Street in Redwood City, California, were purchased by Stanford University Medical Center, greatly remodeled, and reopened as the new home of the Stanford Medicine Outpatient Clinics in 2009. The shells were largely preserved, but the interiors are completely new, providing facilities that had been unavailable in the Palo Alto location. The buildings, plainly labeled Stanford Medicine, are easily visible from the freeway, U.S. 101, where the buildings labeled Excite@Home had previously been.




Features


Features of the @Home network were fairly standardized from one cable provider to another cable provider. All users of the service were granted email addresses which were (username)@home.net. Users were also given a special content-rich start page on the Internet, which was specifically created for broadband speeds at a time when very few websites on the Internet were geared towards broadband users. Users were also granted access to other Excite websites such as Blue Mountain and their greeting card by email service. Also as part of the @Home experience, users were provided with a special Excite@Home web browser which was essentially an @Home re-branded version of Mozilla Firefox with Excite@Home enabled features built within the browser. Additionally, besides the web browser users could also download the Excite@Home powered Instant Messenger, and @Home Assistant desktop widget, which had features like Excite's Search and current wire service news, along with an Internet radio portal known as "TuneIn" (which has no connection or relation to the current-day streaming provider of the same name).




Cobranded @Home services


AT&T@Home (formerly TCI@Home before the purchase of TCI by AT&T)
Charter@Home
Cogeco@Home
Comcast@Home
Cox@Home
Optimum@Home
Intermedia@Home
Rogers@Home
Shaw@Home
SusCom@Home
Optus@Home
Videon@Home
In total Excite@Home offered services to a total of 16 affiliates across the United States and Canada. This included: Cablevision Systems, Century Communications , Charter Communications, Cogeco Cable, Comcast, Cox Communications, Garden State Cable, Insight Communications, InterMedia Partners, Jones Intercable, Midcontinent Cable, Prime Cable, Rogers Cablesystems, Shaw Communications, Suburban Cable, Susquehanna Communications, and Videon Cablesystems with access to over 60 million households.




@Home Benelux


In 1999, @Home Network founded @Home Benelux BV, together with Intel Corporation and the (now former) Dutch companies EDON NV & Palet Kabelcom BV. @Home Benelux BV was based in Amsterdam. Later, N.V. Energie-Distributiebedrijf Oost- en Noord-Nederland (EDON) (then called Essent) got full ownership of @Home Benelux BV, and the company was called Essent Kabelcom. In February 2007, Essent sold Essent Kabelcom to private equity firms Warburg Pincus and Cinven, and the company was once again called @Home (now without the 'Benelux'-part). On May 16, 2008, @Home merged with cable providers Casema and Multikabel into Ziggo, thus becoming the largest cable provider of The Netherlands.




Chief executive officers


William Randolph Hearst III 1996–1997
Thomas Jermoluk 1997–2000
George Bell 2000
Patti S. Hart 2001–2002




Joint ventures


Cable & Wireless Optus
Chello
Excite Chello
@Work
@Home Solutions




References






Further reading


Frank Rose, "The $7 Billion Delusion," Wired Magazine, Jan 2002.




External links


www.home.com Former Official site
@NetHome Japan
Review: Excite@Home – The Joy Of Broadband Access
Family feud: Excite@Home, AT&T: A case study in boardroom politics
All Shook Up over Excite@Home

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