Digital Gateways for Multimedia Home Networks

Residential networks are expected to open a huge market and introduce a bright, new era in telecommunications, by exponentially increasing the network usage, via broadband, added value services. Despite the business risks, investments made by the telecommunication industries clearly express the belief that the home networking market is about to take off. In this paper, a home network architecture for the provision of interactive multimedia services is considered and various access and indoor networking alternatives are presented. Then the focus is put on the Residential Gateway (RG), as a single point of networks convergence. Based on prototypes development, laboratory experiments and field trials throughout Europe and USA, a modular and a compact RG hardware architecture are described and compared, while the software architecture to support the RG functionality is described and the main building blocks are analyzed. Finally, a Web browser-based network management and control application that provides a visual metaphor of the RG is presented. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]