|
Networks & Infrastructure
AT&T’s Home Run
Sets Focus On Ensuring QoS
by Sean Buckley
With the ITU-T’s recent ratification of the Home Phone Network Alliance (HPNA) v.3.1 standard (see Home Networking Goes Global), Vernon Reed, Principal Member of Technical staff AT&T Labs—one of the standard’s biggest proponents--is confident that AT&T and other service providers can reap benefits of enhanced bandwidth and visibility into the customer’s home network.
In part two of a two part interview series, Reed spoke with Telecommunications Magazine Editor Sean Buckley about QoS.
TM: Are you happy with the progress that’s being made to integrate HPNA functions into home networking devices?
Reed: The bottom line is that there’s a realization that home networking is a vicious place to play, but there’s only a few front-runners. When you go digging a bit deeper on the front-runners, you find out each one has their pros and cons. The downside of the whole picture is when these technologies are deployed in a commercial form is that we may be delivering one particular solution based on a technology that’s not necessarily compatible with something the homeowner has already bought. In other words, if you run something that runs at a frequency space that something else runs at too on the coax, the two won’t like each other. Coming into a home where the customer introduces technologies that would interfere, it would become a challenge.
TM: Ok, so then how do you overcome that problem, then?
Reed: In some respects if [a user] wants the service, they are going to have to understand they will have to turn off and embed themselves in the framework that AT&T provides or find an alternative technology if they want to run something separate. If you look at the boxes you get at Best Buy they won’t tell you what they are incompatible with because any form of a disclaimer is a marketing negative. In that respect, you have to live with the fact that people will continue to do things not knowing that the introduction of service, regardless of who the provider is, may introduce problems—problems that force them to migrate to something that the service provider is offering. We can allow you to play on the [home] network with other things, but those other things have to be treated as best effort traffic if you don’t want video to scramble and voice to be intelligible on the VoIP system. The QoS features implemented are there to ensure that the necessary bandwidth on the home network to provide those services is fairly well protected. You can play on them, but you have to play on the open areas.
TM: You just hit on service assurance. One of the things we’re seeing is a drive to develop the ability to drill down and get diagnostics on devices in the home. Do you see that as a growing trend?
Reed: Absolutely. With HPNA today, I can turn around through a command set in the Residential Gateway, for example, in an intrusive way I can run a diagnostic that characterize how much line loss I have between any point A and any point B in the home. Knowing what the operable ranges for my home networking technology, I can tell you if you have a bad wire or a bad splitter or maybe someone did something to the wiring that impaired the signal to and from one particular node. If I want to look for ingress noise sources that in band is stemming out of nowhere that’s generating a frequency line that’s right in the middle of the HPNA band, I can physically find that noise source, tell exactly what the frequency is, know it exists, and how it’s impairing the home network. You may be able to resolve issues over the phone right off the bat and have visibility into all of the different effects that can impair one all or nodes on the network and you’ll know exactly what those are. We’re able to see all way down into the home and if there’s something that has gone bad be able to identify it up front. If you send a service technician, they are not going out there blind, deaf and dumb. They go into the home and know exactly where the problem is.
More Information:
(Interview Part One) AT&T Sets Sights On Digital Home Opportunity
Focuses On Increasing Bandwidth, Network Visibility
Home Networking Goes Global
HPNA V. 3.1 Now A Recognized ITU Standard
AT&T To Spend US$750 Million On Global IP
Emerging Market Growth Spurs Doubling Of Annual Investment
AT&T’s Last Foot Adventure
Aggressive timeline targets 19 million homes.
|
