Home network

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A home network or home area network (HAN) is a type of computer network that facilitates communication among devices within the close vicinity of a home. Devices capable of participating in this network, for example, smart devices such as network printers and handheld mobile computers, often gain enhanced emergent capabilities through their ability to interact. These additional capabilities can be used to increase the quality of life inside the home in a variety of ways, such as automation of repetitive tasks, increased personal productivity, enhanced home security, and easier access to entertainment.

Contents

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 reservied 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

An example of a simple home network Typical Home Network.png
An example of a simple home network

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:

Physical connectivity and protocols

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 radio signal technology; the 802.11 network as certified by the IEEE. Most wireless-capable residential devices operate at a frequency of 2.4 GHz under 802.11b and 802.11g or 5 GHz under 802.11a. Some home networking devices operate in both radio-band signals and fall within the 802.11n or 802.11ac standards. Wi-Fi is a marketing and compliance certification for IEEE 802.11 technologies. [1] The Wi-Fi Alliance has tested compliant products, and certifies them for interoperability.

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 Category 5 or Category 6 twisted pair cabling with RJ45 compatible terminations. This medium provides physical connectivity between the Ethernet interfaces present on a large number of residential IP-aware devices. Depending on the grade of cable and quality of installation, speeds of up to 10 Mbit/s, 100 Mbit/s, 1 Gbit/s, or 10 Gbit/s are supported.

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

Coaxial cables

The following standards allow devices to communicate over coaxial cables, which are frequently installed to support multiple television sets throughout homes.

Power lines

The ITU-T G.hn and IEEE Powerline standard, which provide high-speed (up to 1 Gbit/s) local area networking over existing home wiring, are examples of home networking technology designed specifically for IPTV delivery. [2] Recently, the IEEE passed proposal P1901 which grounded a standard within the Market for wireline products produced and sold by companies that are part of the HomePlug Alliance. [3] The IEEE is continuously working to push for P1901 to be completely recognized worldwide as the sole standard for all future products that are produced for Home Networking.

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

Entertainment

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

Home security and access control

Environmental monitoring and conditioning

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

DHCP is used to assign internal IP addresses to members of a home network. A DHCP server typically runs on the router [5] with end devices as its clients. The router itself is a client of the external DHCP servers owned by the internet service provider. All DHCP clients request configuration settings using the DHCP protocol in order to acquire their IP address, a default route and one or more DNS server addresses. Once the client implements these settings, it will be able to communicate on that internet. [6]

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 web browser running on a PC in the same network. These devices usually use a minimal Linux distribution with a lightweight HTTP server running in the background to allow the user to conveniently modify system variables from a GUI rendered in their browser. These pages use HTML forms extensively and make attempts to offer styled, visually appealing views that are also descriptive and easy to use.

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 shared disk access, shared printer access and shared scanner access among all computers and users (typically family members) in a home, in a similar fashion as in a small office workgroup, e.g., by means of distributed peer-to-peer networking (without a central server). Additionally, a home server may be added for increased functionality. The Windows HomeGroup feature was introduced with Microsoft Windows 7 in order to simplify file sharing in residences. All users (typically all family members), except guest accounts, may access any shared library on any computer that is connected to the home group. Passwords are not required from the family members during logon. Instead, secure file sharing is possible by means of a temporary password that is used when adding a computer to the HomeGroup. [7]

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 VPN that requires a password for network connectivity. [8]

However new Wi-Fi standards working at 60 GHz, such as 802.11ad, enable confidence that the LAN will not trespass physical barriers, as at such frequencies a simple wall would attenuate the signal considerably.

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 software updates and security patches, keeping juniors internet use within safe boundaries, structuring of storage and access levels for private files and other data, data backups, detection and cleaning of any infections, operating virtual private networks for easy access to resources in the home network when away, etc.. Such things are all issues that require attention and planned careful work in order to provide a secure, resilient, and stable home network easy to use for all members of the household and their guests.

See also

Related Research Articles

A MAC address is a unique identifier assigned to a network interface controller (NIC) for use as a network address in communications within a network segment. This use is common in most IEEE 802 networking technologies, including Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Within the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) network model, MAC addresses are used in the medium access control protocol sublayer of the data link layer. As typically represented, MAC addresses are recognizable as six groups of two hexadecimal digits, separated by hyphens, colons, or without a separator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wireless LAN</span> Computer network that links devices using wireless communication within a limited area

A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office building. This gives users the ability to move around within the area and remain connected to the network. Through a gateway, a WLAN can also provide a connection to the wider Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wi-Fi</span> Wireless local area network

Wi-Fi is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio waves. These are the most widely used computer networks, used globally in home and small office networks to link devices and to provide Internet access with wireless routers and wireless access points in public places such as coffee shops, hotels, libraries, and airports to provide visitors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wireless access point</span> Device that allows wireless devices to connect to a wired network

In computer networking, a wireless access point, or more generally just access point (AP), is a networking hardware device that allows other Wi-Fi devices to connect to a wired network or wireless network. As a standalone device, the AP may have a wired connection to a router, but, in a wireless router, it can also be an integral component of the router itself. An AP is differentiated from a hotspot, which is a physical location where Wi-Fi access is available.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Network interface controller</span> Hardware component that connects a computer to a network

A network interface controller is a computer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network.

A wireless gateway routes packets from a wireless LAN to another network, wired or wireless WAN. It may be implemented as software or hardware or a combination of both. Wireless gateways combine the functions of a wireless access point, a router, and often provide firewall functions as well. They provide network address translation (NAT) functionality, so multiple users can use the internet with a single public IP. It also acts like a dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) to assign IPs automatically to devices connected to the network.

A wireless distribution system (WDS) is a system enabling the wireless interconnection of access points in an IEEE 802.11 network. It allows a wireless network to be expanded using multiple access points without the traditional requirement for a wired backbone to link them. The notable advantage of WDS over other solutions is that it preserves the MAC addresses of client frames across links between access points.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wireless router</span> Computer networking device

A wireless router or Wi-Fi router is a device that performs the functions of a router and also includes the functions of a wireless access point. It is used to provide access to the Internet or a private computer network. Depending on the manufacturer and model, it can function in a wired local area network, in a wireless-only LAN, or in a mixed wired and wireless network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Link aggregation</span> Using multiple network connections in parallel to increase capacity and reliability

In computer networking, link aggregation is the combining of multiple network connections in parallel by any of several methods. Link aggregation increases total throughput beyond what a single connection could sustain, and provides redundancy where all but one of the physical links may fail without losing connectivity. A link aggregation group (LAG) is the combined collection of physical ports.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metro Ethernet</span> Metropolitan area network based on Ethernet standards

A metropolitan-area Ethernet, Ethernet MAN, or metro Ethernet network is a metropolitan area network (MAN) that is based on Ethernet standards. It is commonly used to connect subscribers to a larger service network or for internet access. Businesses can also use metropolitan-area Ethernet to connect their own offices to each other.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NetworkManager</span> Software

NetworkManager is a daemon that sits on top of libudev and other Linux kernel interfaces and provides a high-level interface for the configuration of the network interfaces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wireless security</span> Aspect of wireless networks

Wireless security is the prevention of unauthorized access or damage to computers or data using wireless networks, which include Wi-Fi networks. The term may also refer to the protection of the wireless network itself from adversaries seeking to damage the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the network. The most common type is Wi-Fi security, which includes Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) and Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). WEP is an old IEEE 802.11 standard from 1997. It is a notoriously weak security standard: the password it uses can often be cracked in a few minutes with a basic laptop computer and widely available software tools. WEP was superseded in 2003 by WPA, a quick alternative at the time to improve security over WEP. The current standard is WPA2; some hardware cannot support WPA2 without firmware upgrade or replacement. WPA2 uses an encryption device that encrypts the network with a 256-bit key; the longer key length improves security over WEP. Enterprises often enforce security using a certificate-based system to authenticate the connecting device, following the standard 802.11X.

Qualcomm Atheros is a developer of semiconductor chips for network communications, particularly wireless chipsets. The company was founded under the name T-Span Systems in 1998 by experts in signal processing and VLSI design from Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and private industry. The company was renamed Atheros Communications in 2000 and it completed an initial public offering in February 2004, trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol ATHR.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer network</span> Network that allows computers to share resources and communicate with each other

A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. Computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are made up of telecommunication network technologies based on physically wired, optical, and wireless radio-frequency methods that may be arranged in a variety of network topologies.

Mobile VoIP or simply mVoIP is an extension of mobility to a voice over IP network. Two types of communication are generally supported: cordless telephones using DECT or PCS protocols for short range or campus communications where all base stations are linked into the same LAN, and wider area communications using 3G or 4G protocols.

A residential gateway is a small consumer-grade gateway which bridges network access between connected local area network (LAN) hosts to a wide area network (WAN) via a modem, or directly connects to a WAN, while routing. The WAN is a larger computer network, generally operated by an Internet service provider.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wireless repeater</span> Wireless computer networking device

A wireless repeater is a device that takes an existing signal from a wireless router or wireless access point and rebroadcasts it to create a second network. When two or more hosts have to be connected with one another over the IEEE 802.11 protocol and the distance is too long for a direct connection to be established, a wireless repeater is used to bridge the gap. It can be a specialized stand-alone computer networking device. Also, some wireless network interface controllers (WNIC)s optionally support operating in such a mode. Those outside of the primary network will be able to connect through the new "repeated" network. However, as far as the original router or access point is concerned, only the repeater MAC is connected, making it necessary to enable safety features on the wireless repeater. Wireless repeaters are commonly used to improve signal range and strength within homes and small offices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zeroshell</span> Linux distribution

Zeroshell is a small open-source Linux distribution for servers and embedded systems which aims to provide network services. Its administration relies on a web-based graphical interface; no shell is needed to administer and configure it. Zeroshell is available as Live CD and CompactFlash images, and VMware virtual machines.

WiGig, alternatively known as 60 GHz Wi-Fi, refers to a set of 60 GHz wireless network protocols. It includes the current IEEE 802.11ad standard and also the IEEE 802.11ay standard.

IEEE 1905.1 is an IEEE standard which defines a network enabler for home networking supporting both wireless and wireline technologies: IEEE 802.11, IEEE 1901 power-line networking, IEEE 802.3 Ethernet and Multimedia over Coax (MoCA).

References

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  3. 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).
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  6. Roy G. Perry College of Engineering, Prairie View A&M University, Prairie View, TX 77446, United States; Sadiku, Matthew N. O.; Tembely, Mahamadou; Roy G. Perry College of Engineering, Prairie View A&M University, Prairie View, TX 77446, United States; Musa, Sarhan M.; Roy G. Perry College of Engineering, Prairie View A&M University, Prairie View, TX 77446, United States (2017-05-30). "Home Area Networks: A Primer" (PDF). International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering. 7 (5): 634–635. doi:10.23956/ijarcsse/SV7I5/208.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  7. Greg Holden, Lawrence C. Miller, Home Networking Do-It-Yourself for Dummies, John Wiley and Sons, 2011.
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