Bell Canada, BellSouth, SBC Communications and Verizon announced their support for the DSLHome initiative, an industry effort to spur the adoption of DSL-based home networks that will deliver advanced voice, video and data services. The DSLHome initiative, which is being led by the DSL Forum, aims to provide an industry accepted networking architecture that will support fast, reliable and secure connections to the Web and/or virtual private networks by multiple users inside the home. Bell Canada, BellSouth, SBC and Verizon will work with global service providers, vendors and other prominent organizations to share best practices and infrastructure requirements to meet the home networking challenge. The four carriers will present a proposal for a home networking architecture at the upcoming DSL Forum meeting in Boston (September 2-5, 2003). In Q1 2004, the companies also will present a joint contribution defining ADSL Residential Gateway requirements.
http://www.dslforum.org
- In June 2003, The DSL Forum launched a new initiative aimed at extending broadband services past DSL modems and into other devices inside the home. The aim of the new DSLHome initiative is to create an architecture that extends QoS and management requirements into a home network for supporting multimedia applications. Key requirements include simultaneous multi-user, multi-destination support; bandwidth options to suit various usage requirements, specific service levels for video, voice, music and gaming applications; security; and a choice of CPE with simplified installation. The DSLHome initiative has two components: new technical work and market promotion. The new technical work includes:
- LAN side DSL customer premise equipment (CPE) configuration specifications
- Dual port router requirements
- WAN-side DSL CPE management specifications
- Interface & System configuration for ADSL on customer premises
- Privacy and Protection Security
- Technical documents are currently circulating among DSL Forum members. In addition to this technical work, the DSL Forum will be launching programs to improve users’ knowledge of DSL powered home networks. The first outcome of this effort is a pair of home networking user guides, currently under development and scheduled to be released in Q4 2003.
- Other supporters of the DSLHome initiative include the Wi-Fi Alliance, the HomePlug Association, the Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HomePNA), the BCD Forum, the Consumer Electronics Association and others.