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Guest Opinion
June 2000
No argument here
Picking a single winner from among the various home-networking technologies makes for a good argument in the media, but is probably a false dichotomy.
Jeff Thermond, Broadcom
North America has more than 25 million multiple-PC households, millions of which connect to the Internet at broadband speeds. The need for these PCs to share a broadband link requires home networking. We hear a lot of discussion about which physical media the winning home-networking technology will use. Here's a quick summary of the home-networking market today and an educated guess about who wins.
Powerline networks have been around for a very long time, but they have primarily focused on control and home-automation applications like burglar alarms and room lighting. Recently a new group called HomePlug formed with the goal of standardizing data-centric powerline LAN applications in the next two years. If all goes well, products are promised for sometime in 2001.
Wireless LANs have been around for awhile but have focused on the enterprise market. They've failed to take off because of conflict among the numerous competing standards and the fact that they suffer from interference from common household devices, such as microwave ovens. Wireless LANs have not met the necessary conditions for wide acceptance yet, although the mobility that wireless offers is very attractive.
Phoneline, the late arrival, is streaking ahead in terms of shipments, standardization, and performance progress. Several analyst groups point to more than 2 million phoneline chipsets shipping to date. However, phone jacks don't exist in every room.
So which media wins?
Product vendors want the home-networking installation to be nearly invisible. Picking a single winner makes for a good argument in the media, but is probably a false dichotomy. Powerline holds promise for devices near power outlets, but not phone jacks. Today, that is a home-automation and control market. For mobile applications (such as a wireless MP3 player), wireless is the only way to go. For PCs today, the fact they're already near a phone jack that can provide data rates of 10 Mbits/sec or higher with "no new wires" for less than $50 is pretty compelling.
But combinations of media are even more intriguing. A communications chip that could plug into the tens of millions of existing phone jacks or power outlets, as well as use an antenna, would erase all limits. One might argue that cost makes that vision impractical. But Moore's Law (transistor densities double every 18 months) promises that more communications functions can be added at no extra cost to the consumer over a short period of time. This would lead to devices that can talk anytime, anywhere, to the Internet or to each other. And consumers would never have to even think about choosing the "right media."
And that makes the connected devices and consumers the real winners.
Author information
Jeff Thermond is vice president and general manager of Broadcom's home-networking business unit.
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