HomePlug, ITU9960, and HomeGrid

Despite work both in the IEEE and the ITU, there is still rancor around the powerline networking space, as Rick Merritt in EE Times writes. HomePlug supporters have indicated that one major problem with the 9960 spec is that it is not currently backward-compatible with HomePlug products already deployed (27 million nodes already). We will have representatives from both HomePlug and G.hn at our CONNECTIONS™ Europe Summit on Tuesday, so I imagine that we'll have an interesting conversation.

ATIS - another home networking forum?

It looks like the home networking industry is partying like it's 1999 ... all over again.

The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) has announced the creation of the ATIS Home Networking (HNET) Forum. With the Forum’s creation, ATIS now houses the single, centralized body responsible for comprehensively addressing home networking standards. ATIS’ HNET Forum is unique in that it’s the only body to holistically assess the wide variety of on-going home networking standards development work. The Forum provides a pragmatic solution to the often confusing and decentralized home networking standards development arena.

The Home Networking Forum’s creation was a specific recommendation of ATIS’ Home Networking Assessment & Work Plan. Released today, this comprehensive document is the result of more than a year’s work by ATIS’ CTO-led Technology and Operations Council and its Home Networking Focus Group (FG). FG included representatives from: Cisco, Verizon, AT&T, Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson, Qwest, Sony, Hitachi, ADC, Corning, Haywire, Intrado, Conexant Systems and Widevine.

Ummmm...don't we already have enough of these groups? Between the Broadband Forum, the HGi, the IEEE, and the ITU, haven't we saturated the market with enough home networking bodies? I'm really curious to see what ATIS is bringing to the table that the rest of these groups aren't.

Some additional notes regarding P1901 and ITU 9960

I followed up with some of the principals involved in the IEEE P1901 and ITU-T G.9960 (G.hn) work last week to clarify a few points. These requests followed a briefing with the folks with MoCA, who have grievances about the ITU process and the decision that was reached in December to approve the foundation document. Here are some of the primary issues that the MoCA folks wanted to air:
1. They note that this is still an uncompleted specification, noting that no MAC agreement has been reached (and contesting the notion that the PHY is 100% solid). For the record, the ITU and the HomeGrid Forum have made note of the need to finalize the MAC specification. This could be accomplished with a companion spec for a media access controller that could be implemented in firmware is expected to be complete as early as September 2009. Thanks to Rick Merritt at The EE Times for that good explanation.
2. The MoCA folks feel that they were largely shut out of negotations in the ITU process, arguing that they had put forth a recommendation to make the ITU backward-compatible to MoCA. Contacts at DS2 and CopperGate note that the ITU specification is not backward-compatible with any current "no-new-wires" standard, and trying to achieve this and please everyone would have resulted in a much slower process. They indicate that it will be up to individual semiconductor companies to build in backwards compatibility.

Were their politics involved in this process? Undoubtedly. I do understand the sense of urgency under which both the IEEE and ITU have been working. It would appear that standardizing on a single powerline solution was really the critical component of the standards process, as this standards mess has held up market development for far too many years. Although MoCA supporters may not like feeling shut out of the development process, one explanation I got from someone privy to the ITU process was simple but probably a critical factor. He indicates that - for the European market in particular - coax solutions will not have the same critical role to play as powerline. Therefore, a solution like MoCA - which is well suited to the U.S. cable industry - simply wasn't going to be considered in the final process.

P1901 to ITU: "We got home network standard game, too!"

Why can I not get "Dueling Banjos" out of my head right now?

Following up the news that the ITU has approved PHY specs for the ITU-T G.9960 (formerly known as the G.hn work), the IEEE (and HomePlug/Intellon in particular) are touting their own success in establishing a single powerline specification. Are we there yet? We'll see - I've tapped some contacts at DS2 to see if they have some comment.