Why We Love ITU G.hn

Remember back to the days before WiFi.  There was an industry standard developed by the IEEE (http://www.ieee.org/web/standards/home/index.html) known as IEEE 802.11b (just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it).  The major players formed a SIG (see our March 14 blog on SIGs vs Standards body (http://homepnablog.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/03/why-its-importa.html) to promote the technology and certify products and named it WiFi. Millions of shipments later, WiFi products are easy to find in stores and it's become synonymous with home networking.

 If you follow our blog (http://homepnablog.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/05/why-we-love-itu.html) you already know about the next generation of home networking technologies which use the existing wires in the home to provide more uniform coverage over the home, higher speeds, and better reliability.  These products are being used by service providers today for the IPTV and VoIP parts of their triple-play services.

 Quietly, a rapidly growing number of companies, including some of the world's largest telcos and leading wired home networking developers, have been working in the ITU (http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/) to develop the next generation of wired home networking technology - one that will work over coax, phone wires AND powerline delivering gigabit data rates. The advantages: lower development costs, lower deployment costs, and just plain better performance to support the IPTV, online gaming, and new over-the-top applications. The group is on a fastrack and meeting face to face every month to deliver a complete standard by the end of 2008.

This standard is known by the equally poetic name of G.hn.  The group working on it is the same group that develops DSL standards and developed the current G.9954 (http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-G.9954-200701-I/en) home networking standard for coax and phone wires.

 

There has been a lot of excitement in the last couple days in response to news surrounding G.hn. HomePNA and HomePNA members have a long history working with the ITU and we believe G.hn is the future of wired home networking -- leading edge technology that will continue to compliment WiFi wireless home networking -- and we are excited about the attention it is getting.

• HomePNA has been a is a leading ITU companion SIG for almost 10 years
• HomePNA was the first SIG to support an ITU home networking standard
• HomePNA currently supports the widely adopted ITU g.9954 standard
• HomePNA is supporting g.hn as the next ITU standard - the HomePNA roadmap will include broad support for g.hn
• HomePNA will co-exist well with g.hn

Stay tuned for additional thoughts on G.hn as well as the recently announced HomeGrid SIG.

News and Notes

As we mentioned, HomePNA recently started a blog (http://homepnablog.typepad.com/) to build a community devoted to providing rich content about home networking, HomePNA's triple-play solution, IPTV and much more. We invite all of our prospective and current members to read and comment on our articles. We hope to create an interactive forum where everyone in our ecosystem shares the latest information about home networking. Please join us and don't hesitate to leave your thoughts online.