JANUARY 15, 2009 -- The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS; search for ATIS) has announced the December 2008 creation of the ATIS Home Networking (HNET) Forum. With the forum's creation, ATIS says it now houses the single, centralized body responsible for comprehensively addressing home networking standards.
ATIS asserts that the HNET Forum is unique as the only body to "holistically assess the wide variety of ongoing home networking standards development work."
The Home Networking Forum's creation came as the result of a recommendation of ATIS's Home Networking Assessment & Work Plan. Released today, this document is the result of more than a year's work by ATIS's CTO-led Technology and Operations Council and its Home Networking Focus Group (FG). The FG included representatives from Cisco, Verizon, AT&T, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Qwest, Sony, Hitachi, ADC, Corning, Haywire, Intrado, Conexant Systems, and Widevine.
Commissioned by the ATIS board of directors, the FG assessed issues affecting the development of a cohesive home networking infrastructure to support VoIP, IPTV, and other IP-based services.
The assessment and work plan includes:
- A home networking technological assessment from both logical and functional perspectives. This includes a high-level framework and the identification of IP home networks' essential "building blocks."
- An in-depth industry analysis to better understand the current status of home networking standards development; the study revealed 34 different groups with study programs related to the home network.
- A standards gap analysis in technical areas such as management, QoS, security, connection and discovery, remote access, and energy consumption. The HNET-FG study revealed 33 technical standards gaps, each requiring action.
The Home Networking Forum has scheduled its initial meeting for February 3, 2009, with Cisco System's Gale Lightfoot serving as convener. The meeting will include a review of the Home Networking Assessment & Work Plan and begin addressing identified issues. The first meeting will be open to all interested participants from the information, entertainment, and communications industry, including carriers, service providers, consumer electronics companies, content suppliers, equipment manufacturers, and others interested in home networking's technical standardization. Future meetings will be limited exclusively to forum member-companies. For more information on the Home Networking Forum, and to register for the February 3 meeting, contact Jackie Voss at [email protected] or 913-393-0891.
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