Software implementation of the HomeMAC: QoS based MAC protocol for the home network

In 1999, HomePNA2.0 using phone lines was proposed, and we believe it is one of the most promising solutions, because of its cost-effectiveness. However, owing to the adaptation of the mature IEEE802.3 CSMA/CD technology used for Ethernet, the QoS cannot be guaranteed. In light of this, we present the design, simulation evaluation, software implementation and empirical evaluation of a new MAC protocol for the home network called the HomeMAC. In this paper, the software-based HomeMAC is implemented by programming the kernel space of FreeBSD. The HomeMAC features a hybrid CSMA/CD-timed token protocol, which combines the CSMA/CD for non-real-time traffic with a timed token protocol for real-time traffic. In addition, by providing flexible bandwidth allocation based on a QoS level table (QLT), the HomeMAC can serve high QoS covering the whole offered load. From the results of the evaluation of the software implementation, we verified that HomeMAC can provide low delay, low loss, and low jitter to real-time traffic by reserving bandwidth.