Finally, a low cost high quality home network for carriers

We're stubborn.  We admit it.  In the face of repeated and consistent pleas about how wireless is going to take over the world, we still see a strong role for wireline technologies.
 
Whenever someone has reached any sort of bandwidth, capacity or other milestone, and claimed victory, there was always another vendor coming up next with something bigger, better, faster, etc.  And where wireless has gotten speedier, fatter and more secure, so have the wireline technologies and so have the application requirements.
 
We focus a lot on the home these days because the triple play is focused there, and that's where a lot of innovation is happening. We've lived through the various versions of HomePlug, HPNA, MOCA, structured wiring solutions, wireless repeaters and the like over the years, and watched as music, video, pictures, and other files have grown quickly in size and latency requirements.
 
So what's the right answer? Well first, everyone will say that it's going to be a combination of technologies, not one, that fits the bill. That may indeed be the case, but we've long been proponents of combining wireless access to devices with a wired backplane - and we think we've found a solution that provides just that.
 
Other wired or wireless-only solutions just always seem to run into limitations:
 
1. Wireless fades. No matter how good a wireless signal, it fades with distance. In Danny's house, we pride ourselves in benchmarking who can cover his domicile.  Most - Cisco, Parkervision, D-Link, NETGEAR - make it only to the living room before petering out. Belkin makes it a little further, to the guest rooms and (sort of) to the second floor. Yes, you can put in repeaters and bridges, or better antennas, but the signal still fades. Turn on the microwave in Danny's kitchen, and watch it all drop precipitously.

2. Coax connections are limited. Unless you have a new house and wired coax to each room, coax is in fewer rooms in a home than phone jacks.

3. Powerline connections are the most plentiful, but the jury is still out on powerline technologies despite the rampant recent investments by very big players, as well as 100M bit/sec+ announcements by chip vendors. We've measured the power fluctuations in a home - they really vary a lot. And there's more stuff being plugged in, not less. We're skeptical here.

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We're stubborn.  We admit it.  In the face of repeated and consistent pleas about how wireless is going to take over the world, we still see a strong role for wireline technologies.
 
Whenever someone has reached any sort of bandwidth, capacity or other milestone, and claimed victory, there was always another vendor coming up next with something bigger, better, faster, etc.  And where wireless has gotten speedier, fatter and more secure, so have the wireline technologies and so have the application requirements.
 
We focus a lot on the home these days because the triple play is focused there, and that's where a lot of innovation is happening. We've lived through the various versions of HomePlug, HPNA, MOCA, structured wiring solutions, wireless repeaters and the like over the years, and watched as music, video, pictures, and other files have grown quickly in size and latency requirements.
 
So what's the right answer? Well first, everyone will say that it's going to be a combination of technologies, not one, that fits the bill. That may indeed be the case, but we've long been proponents of combining wireless access to devices with a wired backplane - and we think we've found a solution that provides just that.
 
Other wired or wireless-only solutions just always seem to run into limitations:
 
1. Wireless fades. No matter how good a wireless signal, it fades with distance. In Danny's house, we pride ourselves in benchmarking who can cover his domicile.  Most - Cisco, Parkervision, D-Link, NETGEAR - make it only to the living room before petering out. Belkin makes it a little further, to the guest rooms and (sort of) to the second floor. Yes, you can put in repeaters and bridges, or better antennas, but the signal still fades. Turn on the microwave in Danny's kitchen, and watch it all drop precipitously.

2. Coax connections are limited. Unless you have a new house and wired coax to each room, coax is in fewer rooms in a home than phone jacks.

3. Powerline connections are the most plentiful, but the jury is still out on powerline technologies despite the rampant recent investments by very big players, as well as 100M bit/sec+ announcements by chip vendors. We've measured the power fluctuations in a home - they really vary a lot. And there's more stuff being plugged in, not less. We're skeptical here.

4. HPNA is a great concept, but the last version was dead on arrival. There's lots of hope and trust in HPNA 3.0, but also a lot of doubt.

5. A multi-vendor environment is a given, at least for now. There's a lot of legacy equipment in a home. Danny's got old 3Com, Linksys, Netgear, Dell, and other gear operational in his network, with no good reason to replace it yet. Solutions that require linking to a particular vendor's solution for home networking will take a while to take off. You need to support multiple vendors in any solution. Interoperability is critical.

6. A whole-home solution is required. You need consistent service, in each room, to support applications like Wi-Fi phones, Podcasting, remote control of systems and devices, inter-room video, etc. - a flat, even, QoS-based network that does not fluctuate.
 
So what are you going to do? If you talk with those manning the help desks they say there's got to be a better way. We agree.
 
So imagine our pleasure to try out the latest version of SercoNet's in-home WirePlus system. This system supports a whole-home wireless infrastructure based on a phone-wireline backbone. It puts wireless everywhere in Danny's house with no maintenance required of the end points. It acts, essentially, as a whole home "waveguide" for 802.11, supporting any QoS (like WMM -- Wireless Multimedia, the Wi-Fi Alliance's QoS standard), and providing 21M bit/sec+ of actual throughput.
 
It is a self-install - no truck roll.  No substantial configuration, nothing to manage, nothing to break.
 
SercoNet's trick is that the protocol over the backplane is 802.11. The endpoint devices that you can install in your house, in various rooms, are not actually access points but rather remote antennas for your access point back near your broadband connection. Slap one in a wall jack in the room where your wireless access point in housed, and plug in the units in other jacks around the house. The units self-discover, and extend the wireless connectivity found at the source. Since there are few active components in the devices, the cost is kept down. What's more, no worrying about configuration CDs, management systems, etc. -- these systems just don't need any of that.
 
SercoNet has a model with Ethernet jacks and a built-in AP, as well as VoIP models that offer VoIP jacks in the same fashion. It's expected that the mass market versions will have the WirePlus core technology embedded in the broadband gateway/routers themselves, that you can plug into the wall directly to bridge the home phone net to your broadband connection. The agnosticity of the SercoNet approach is perhaps its most appealing asset -- it can be adapted to extend many signals throughout the house, including WiMAX and DECT.
 
So it was the first real product that passed the Danny Test - whole home, inexpensive, high quality wireline/wireless connectivity, capable of supporting all of today's known applications. SercoNet is in the process now of licensing its technologies to major equipment vendors for resale through distribution channels.
 
If you are a carrier whose business model is augmented by the broader and more reliable availability of broadband wireless and wireline in the home, you should take a hard look at SercoNet's advantages over HPNA, MOCA, HomePlug and other technologies.