Home network
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A home network or home area network (HAN) is a type of
Origin
IPv4 address exhaustion has forced most Internet service providers to grant only a single WAN-facing IP address for each residential account. Multiple devices within a residence or small office are provisioned with internet access by establishing a local area network (LAN) for the local devices with IP addresses reserved for private networks. A network router is configured with the provider's IP address on the WAN interface, which is shared among all devices in the LAN by network address translation.
Infrastructure devices
Certain devices on a home network are primarily concerned with enabling or supporting the communications of the kinds of end devices home-dwellers more directly interact with. Unlike their data center counterparts, these "networking" devices are compact and passively cooled, aiming to be as hands-off and non-obtrusive as possible:
- A gateway establishes physical and data link layer connectivity to a WAN over a service provider's native telecommunications infrastructure. Such devices typically contain a cable, DSL, or optical modem bound to a network interface controller for Ethernet. Routers are often incorporated into these devices for additional convenience.
- A switch.
- A network switch is used to allow devices on the home network to talk to one another via Ethernet. While the needs of most home networks are satisfied with the built-in wireless and/or switching capabilities of their router, some situations require the addition of a separate switch with advanced capabilities. For example:
- A typical home router has 4 to 6 Ethernet LAN ports, so a router's switching capacity could be exceeded.
- A network device might require a non-standard port feature such as IP phones)
- A wireless access point is required for connecting wireless devices to a network. When a router includes this device, it is referred to as a wireless router.
- A home automation or smart home controller acts as a gateway and router for low-power wireless networks of simple, non-data-intensive devices such as light bulbs and locks.
- A network bridge binds two different network interfaces to each other, often in order to grant a wired-only device access to a wireless network medium.
Physical connectivity and protocols
| Home networking standards |
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| IEEE standardized |
| ITU-T recommendation |
Home networks can use either wired or wireless technologies to connect endpoints. Wireless is the predominant option in homes due to the ease of installation, lack of unsightly cables, and network performance characteristics sufficient for residential activities.
Wireless
Wireless LAN
One of the most common ways of creating a home network is by using
Wireless PAN
Low power, close range communication based on IEEE 802.15 standards has a strong presence in homes. Bluetooth continues to be the technology of choice for most wireless accessories such as keyboards, mice, headsets, and game controllers. These connections are often established in a transient, ad-hoc manner and are not thought of as permanent residents of a home network.
Low-rate wireless PAN
A "low-rate" version of the original WPAN protocol was used as the basis of Zigbee. Despite originally being conceived as a standard for low power machine-to-machine communication in industrial environments, the technology has been found to be well suited for integration into embedded "Smart Home" offerings that are expected to run on battery for extended periods of time. Zigbee utilizes mesh networking to overcome the distance limitations associated with traditional WPAN in order to establish a single network of addressable devices spread across the entire building. Z-Wave is an additional standard also built on 802.15.4, that was developed specifically with the needs of home automation device makers in mind.
Twisted pair cables
Most wired network infrastructures found in homes utilize
Fiber optics
Some neighborhoods support running fiber optic cables running directly into homes. This enables service providers to offer internet services with much higher bandwidth and/or lower latency characteristics associated with end-to-end optical signaling.
Telephone wires
- VDSL2
- HomePNA support up to 160 Mbit/s
Coaxial cables
The following standards allow devices to communicate over coaxial cables, which are frequently installed to support multiple television sets throughout homes.
- DOCSIS
- The Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) standard can achieve up to 1.5 Gbit/s[citation needed]
- CWave
- HomePNA support up to 320 Mbit/s
Power lines
The
- HomePlug and HomePNA are associated standards
- Universal Powerline Association
Endpoint devices and services
Traditionally, data-centric equipment such as computers and media players have been the primary tenants of a home network. However, due to the lowering cost of computing and the ubiquity of smartphone usage, many traditionally non-networked home equipment categories now include new variants capable of control or remote monitoring through an app on a smartphone. Newer startups and established home equipment manufacturers alike have begun to offer these products as part of a "Smart" or "Intelligent" or "Connected Home" portfolio. The control and/or monitoring interfaces for these products can be accessed through proprietary smartphone applications specific to that product line.
General purpose
- Personal computers such as desktops, laptops, netbooks, and tablets
- A CIFS or NFSprotocols for general storage or for backup purposes.
- A print server can be used to share any directly connected printers with other computers on the network.
- VoIPtechnologies
Entertainment
- Smart speakers
- Television: Some new .
- Home audio: running on a remote PC.
- Gaming: Video game consolesrely on connectivity to the home network to enable a significant portion of their overall features, such as the multiplayer in games, social network integration, ability to purchase or demo new games, and receive software updates. Recent consoles have begun more aggressively pursuing the role of the sole entertainment and media hub of the home.
- DLNA is a common protocol used for interoperability between networked media-centric devices in the home.
Some older entertainment devices may not feature the appropriate network interfaces required for home network connectivity. In some situations, USB dongles and PCI Network Interface Cards are available as accessories that enable this functionality.
Lighting
- "Connected" light bulbs such as
- Zigbee Light Linkis the open standards protocol used by current major "Connected" light bulb vendors
Home security and access control
- Access control: Plume[4]
- Security alarms: iSmartAlarm
- Garage door and gate openers: Liftmaster MyQ, GoGogate
Environmental monitoring and conditioning
- HVAC: Nest Learning Thermostat
- Smoke/CO detectors: Nest Protect
Cloud services
The convenience, availability, and reliability of externally managed cloud computing resources continues to become an appealing choice for many home-dwellers without interest or experience in IT. For these individuals, the subscription fees and/or privacy risks associated with such services are often perceived as lower cost than having to configure and maintain similar facilities within a home network. In such situations, local services along with the devices maintaining them are replaced by those in an external data center and made accessible to the home-dweller's computing devices via a WAN connection.
Network management
Network Layer Configuration
Embedded devices
Small standalone embedded home network devices typically require remote configuration from a PC on the same network. For example, broadband modems are often configured through a
Apple ecosystem devices
Apple devices aim to make networking as hidden and automatic as possible, utilizing a zero-configuration networking protocol called Bonjour embedded within their otherwise proprietary line of software and hardware products.
Microsoft ecosystem devices
Microsoft offers simple access control features built into their Windows operating system. Homegroup is a feature that allows
Common issues and concerns
Wireless signal loss
The wireless signal strength of the standard residential wireless router may not be powerful enough to cover the entire house or may not be able to get through to all floors of multiple floor residences. In such situations, the installation of one or more wireless repeaters may be necessary.
"Leaky" Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi often extends beyond the boundaries of a home and can create coverage where it is least wanted, offering a channel through which non-residents could compromise a system and retrieve personal data. To prevent this it is usually sufficient to enforce the use of authentication, encryption, or
However new Wi-Fi standards working at 60 GHz, such as
Electrical grid noise
For home networks relying on powerline communication technology, how to deal with electrical noise injected into the system from standard household appliances remains the largest challenge. Whenever any appliance is turned on or turned off it creates noise that could possibly disrupt data transfer through the wiring. IEEE products that are certified to be HomePlug 1.0 compliant have been engineered to no longer interfere with, or receive interference from other devices plugged into the same home's electrical grid.[9]
Administration
The administration of proliferating devices and software in home networks, and the growing amount of private data, is fast becoming an issue by itself. Keeping overview, applying without delay
See also
- Access control
- Computer security software
- Data backup
- Encryption
- Firewall (computing)
- Home automation
- Home server
- Indoor positioning system (IPS)
- Matter
- Network security
- Smart, connected products
- Software update
- Virtual assistant
References
- ^ “Discover and Learn,” WiFi Alliance, http://www.wi-fi.org/discover_and_learn.php Archived 2010-07-04 at the Wayback Machine (accessed June 30, 2010).
- ISBN 9781466557529. Archivedfrom the original on 2015-10-17. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
- ^ Faure, Jean-Philippe. “IEEE P1901 Draft Standard for Broadband over Power Line Networks: Medium Access Control and Physical Layer Specifications,” IEEE Standards Association, http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/1901/ Archived 2019-02-18 at the Wayback Machine (accessed June 22, 2010).
- ^ "Akamai, Plume join for wired, wireless security coverage". FierceWireless. Archived from the original on 2021-05-13. Retrieved 2021-05-13.
- ^ What is DHCP? Archived 2013-12-07 at the Wayback Machine. whatismyip.com.
- doi:10.23956/ijarcsse/SV7I5/208.)
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link - ^ Greg Holden, Lawrence C. Miller, Home Networking Do-It-Yourself for Dummies, John Wiley and Sons, 2011.
- ^ Wangerien, Brian. "The Challenges of Wi-Fi." Communications News. Encyclopædia Britannica. Web http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/21597846/The-challenges-of-WiFi.
- ^ “Frequently Asked Questions,” HomePlug Powerline Alliance, http://www.homeplug.org/about/faqs/ Archived 2014-03-31 at the Wayback Machine (accessed June 22, 2010).