DS2 Blog

GigaOM: G.hn standard will dominate wired networking industry

Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOm provides a good analysis of the growing momentum of G.hn and how it will change the dynamics of the wired home networking industry:

But the three standards vying for dominance today could gradually give ground to an emerging standard for delivering IP-based services called G.hn.
This fall, the electronics industry will finalize a standard called G.hn (already being pushed by the HomeGrid Forum) that will allow chip companies to provide the silicon that can deliver 700 Megabit-per-second speeds over power lines, coax or copper. It’s likely that once G.hn products come to market (chips should be out in 2010), the standard will dominate, because an operator could deploy one box for all types of homes. That’s simpler for the operator, and the economies of scale associated with making so many chips should bring the cost of the silicon down.

You can read the complete post here.

British Telecom joins HomeGrid Forum Board of Directors

This week we have seen several examples of how the new G.hn standard for wired home networking is getting increased support. On the same day in which it was announced that a new draft of G.hn had been approved, HomeGrid Forum announced that British Telecom (BT), one of the most innovative telecomunications service providers, had joined the Board of Directors of the organization that promotes G.hn.

New G.hn draft approved

This week, HomeGrid Forum announced that a new version of the G.hn draft had been approved at the last ITU meeting. What is new about the recent G.hn draft is that all the key elements of the Data Link Layer (DLL) have been adopted as "baseline text".

In ITU terminology, "baseline text" means that the text is mature and that any further change requires consensus (and "consensus" in ITU is a very strong word, by the way). In practice, what this means is that silicon vendors can safely assume that there will be no significant changes in the DLL in the future.

So, what is new in the latest G.hn draft?

The latest G.hn draft specifies the Data Link Layer, which sits on top of the Physical Layer defined in G.9960 (adopted in December 2008). According to the OSI model (ITU Recommendation X.200), the Data Link Layer is responsible for flow control, sequence control, error detection and recovery, relaying, etc.

How Telefónica uses DS2 powerline technology for IPTV distribution

Telefónica is one of the first IPTV Service Providers that pioneered the use of powerline networking technology for distribution of IPTV services to any room in their subscribers' homes.

Telefonica uses powerline ethernet adapters based on the UPA specification and powered by DS2 powerline chips.

In this video, Telefónica shows what powerline technology is, and how it is used as part of Telefónica's IPTV Imagenio service.

PC World: Fastest powerline ethernet adapters are based on DS2 technology

Following the positive reviews at Computer Shopper and CNET, PC World just came out with another excellent review of D-Link's DHP-303, powered by DS2 Aitana powerline chip.

The DHP-303 got a score of 91 (Superior).

Becky Waring, well known author at PC World, and with many years of experience reviewing powerline networking products, wrote this in her review:

The D-Link’s UPA technology offers far higher throughput than competing HomePlug kits, as well as push-button encryption setup and informative LEDs.

Using TR-069 to manage powerline ethernet adapters in IPTV home networks

This is the first of a series of posts about how to use TR-069 to manage DS2 powerline networks.

TR-069 is a suite of standard protocols created by the DSL Forum (now Broadband Forum) to manage end-user devices in broadband networks, such as DSL routers, IPTV Set-Top-Boxes or VoIP adapters. With TR-069, service providers can remotely control powerline devices and perform management tasks.

Why the Smart Grid must be based on IP standards

Image by Ian Muttoo via Flickr

The debate on what technologies and standards should be used as the foundation for the future Smart Grid is heating up. Multiple vendors and industry organizations are pushing their own (often incompatible) views of the Smart Grid.

Even if we focus only in the area of communications standards for Smart Grid, we find different options being proposed: high-speed and low-speed powerline technology, IEEE 802.15.4, cellular networks, WiMAX and many others.

Smart Grid networks will be hybrid networks

Although at DS2 we think that high-speed powerline networking technology is the best positioned to deliver a scalable platform for SmartGrid, other technologies also provide benefits in specific scenarios (for example, in cases where a utility wants to manage water or gas meters that don't have a power connection), so many utilities may need to use a combination of multiple technologies to build their Smart Grid.

AT&T;'s perspective on the new G.hn standard

HomeGrid Forum has published a webinar ("A Service Provider's Perspective on G.hn Webinar") featuring Tom Starr, lead member of technical staff at AT&T. Tom is one of the most active contributors to the G.hn standard developed at ITU.
Some of the highlights of the webinar:

• Service providers feel the pressure to offer "self-install" IPTV, and G.hn is focused on achieving exactly that.
• Service providers need home networking technology that can work over any wire (as specified in G.hn), so that they can adapt to the characteristics of the wiring available in their customers' homes.

You can watch the whole webinar at the HomeGrid Forum website "A Service Provider's Perspective on G.hn Webinar" (registration required).

Aitana-based powerline adapters beat competition

John R. Delane at Computer Shopper recently published a review of the latest D-Link’s Powerline HD Network Starter Kit DHP-303. The DHP-303 (which has been featured in this blog before) is powered by the latest DS2's AITANA powerline communications chipset.

The D-Link adapter gets a score of 8 (out of 10) and an "Editors' Choice" recognition.
Some highlights from the review:

Top Ten Things You Need to Know About the New G.hn Standard

Readers of this blog already know that G.hn (also known as G.9960) is the new standard developed by ITU (the same group of experts that developed the highly succesful ADSL, VDSL and VDSL2 standards) for high-speed networking over existing home wiring (power lines, phone lines and coaxial cable). We have written about how fast G.hn is, about the various organizations that support G.hn, and about the major applications targeted by G.hn.

What we have not done before is providing a comprehensive overview of the most important advantages provided by the standard. So, that's the goal of this post.

#1: G.hn is faster than any existing wired home networking technology

G.hn will be fast. As we detailed in this post ("How fast can G.hn be?"), with its default setting G.hn can provide a line data rate over coaxial cable of up to 843.75 Mbps (with actual Ethernet throughput at 762.05 Mbps), and includes optimizations that can support line data rates up to 1.02 Gbit/s.