Digital Home Networking

Chapter 2

Actors in Digital Home Networking

2.1. Scope

Whether your way of life resembles more that of the Great Gatsby, or, on the contrary, that of St. Anthony of the Desert, your home is certainly known, used, monitored, or visited by some people. Your friends, your family, perhaps your colleagues visit you at home. Public services and commercial services (the water provider, estate agencies, the postal service, a catering service, etc.) may visit your home for different purposes (technical control, meter reading, financial evaluation, etc.), occasionally or regularly.

In the same manner, your digital home is likely to interact with a large diversity of agents – individuals or corporate bodies – either in the real world or through their digital identity. Friends coming for dinner in the evening may be detected by a motion sensor in the alley that switches on the outside lighting. The electricity provider may, through a secure communication channel, perform a remote meter reading. Digital home use cases are just countless.

These digital home actors, depending on their very nature (adults, children, animals, moral persons), may certainly have specific abilities or privileges. Your 10-year old may wash the Aston Martin but does not drive it. And, likewise, while your kitten is able to go in and out through the cat flap, you have no such capability. In other words, categories of actors may encompass different properties, which may have, furthermore, a permanent character or may ...