Home Area Networks and IPTV

Chapter 1

Services Offered by Home Area Networks

1.1. Why home networking?

The current evolution of society in developed countries has led to very high speed access to information networks being seen as essential in order to avoid marginalization.

Following the lead of North America, households are no longer happy with a single television program and wish to receive two to five programs – and sometimes more – on various different television sets, ranging from high definition flat screens to VGA or QVGA screens. When we take into account the increasing demands for digital television – and also those for Internet surfing, VoIP and new services to be in used in the home – we have to consider home area networks carrying more than 50 Mbps (for effective capacity, not including error correction mechanisms). Most forecasts converge on a value of 100 Mbps. This has an impact on the Internet access technology to be deployed in the future.

At the same time, an awareness of environmental problems, notably those linked to travel, has led us to consider carrying out tasks at home which would previously have been done in the office, including in design offices with CAD (computer-aided design) directly linked (or not) to automatons and robots on the production floor. High speed Internet allows the possibility of real collaborative work between people across the country and the world. As a result, a substantial saving in hydrocarbon consumption is achieved, as well as an improvement in the quality ...