Home Networking

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HOME NETWORKING

Home networking is the connection of several electronic devices, such as personal computers (PCs) and printers, to a single network, which is known as a home-area network (HAN). Although proponents of the technology claim future home networks will allow homeowners to link all sorts of appliances, like microwaves, stereos, and televisions, most of the HANs in existence in 2001 comprised desktop computers, laptop computers, modems, and printers. This type of technology allows home computer users with more than one PC to do things like share files between multiple machines, use a single Internet connection, and send documents from various PCs to a single printer. In the late 1990s, many research firms predicted that home networking would become a billion dollar market within a couple of years. For example, Dataquest Inc. forecasted $2 billion in U.S. home networking sales by 2002 and $4 billion in sales by 2004. However, the technology caught on less quickly than anticipated and sales only had reached $290 million by 2000. Projections for 2001 were scaled back to less than $600 million.

Several leading technology firms—including Nortel Networks Corp., Intel Corp., IBM Corp., and Compaq Computer Corp.—had begun investing in home networking technology by 1998. Anticipating an increase in demand for this type of network, Microsoft Corp. included an application known as Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) in its Windows 98 platform. The new technology allowed users to share an Internet connection—via modem, digital subscriber line (DSL), ISDN, or cable—with other networked machines running Windows 98. Problems with the first version of ICS prompted Microsoft to offer an upgraded version of ICS, along with a tutorial program dubbed ICS Wizard, in both Windows 98 Second Edition and Windows ME.

In 1999, Lucent Technologies began working on communication chips for the home networking market. Cisco Systems Inc. began offering At Home Networks to explain the benefits of home networking to consumers, hoping to boost interest in its home networking products. Broadcom Corp. also diversified into home networking by developing products that connected in-home appliances via existing telephone lines. In fact, Broadcom, Compaq, IBM, Lucent, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, 3Com, AT&T Wireless, AMD and others formed an organization known as HomePNA to create compatible home networking appliances for use on existing telephone wires. These companies were betting on market research reports, many of which indicated that the number of networked homes—roughly 15,000 in early 1999—would reach 5 million or 6 million by 2002.

Along with telephone lines, home telephone networks also can be created using power lines, with Ethernet connections as the speediest option, and wireless connections, such as Wi-Fi, a wireless standard officially known as 802.11b. Wireless home networking products began to garner more recognition in 2001. That year, EarthLink, a leading Internet Service Provider (ISP), began selling 2Wire home networking products, known as residential gateways, which allow multiple PCs in a single home to share a DSL Internet connection. 2Wire's HomePortal 1000 allows customers to create a home network using the Wi-Fi wireless standard.

Microsoft's highly marketed Windows XP—released in late 2001—also contains technology to support Wi-Fi. According to a September 2001 article in CNET News.com, "Microsoft's promotion of Wi-Fi in XP could educate consumers and spur interest in the hyped but still emerging market for home networking." With more than 20 million households using multiple computers at the turn of the century, home networking technology developers continued to work on new applications that will simplify for homeowners the process of connecting their machines via a network.