Just imagine: your very own local area network, in the comfort of your own home. To technophobes, this may sound like the very definition of hell, with cables snaking around carpets and down hallways. But others envision a future in which the household intranet is invisible and painless.
In the latter camp is a new industry coalition, the Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HomePNA). The group is out to establish a specification for building a home computer network out of the copper phone lines already coursing through millions of houses.
In theory, once plugged into this new household data-path, computers and other digital devices could share servers, printers, and modems, swap video and email, and do all the other things that local area networks ordinarily do in office environments.
"In the business world, the real power of the PC revolution was unleashed only when PCs were networked together. The goal of HomePNA is to extend that revolution into the home," said Rod Schrock, vice president and general manager for the Consumer Products Group at Compaq (CPQ), in a statement from HomePNA.
Compaq is one of the founding members of the new coalition, which also includes 3Com, AMD, AT&T Wireless, Epigram, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Lucent Technologies, Rockwell Semiconductor Systems, and Tut Systems. Using the still-unnamed home networking specification, member companies hope to roll out products by the end of this year.
In a similar effort, many of the same companies belong to another coalition formed in March to push a standard for wireless in-home networks: the Shared Wireless Access Protocol. The membership of the Home Radio Frequency Working Group includes Microsoft, Compaq, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Motorola, and Rockwell Semiconductor.
And in February, Data General announced a wireless home server for running a cable-free network in homes and small offices.
The HomePNA specification represents another standard that the computer industry hopes will drive the fledgling home networking market. Predicting big growth in the demand for home networking products, HomePNA cited Dataquest research showing that more than 15 million US homes have two or more PCs, as well as Jupiter Communications projections that more than 15 million information appliance products will be purchased in the next five years.
"[The HomePNA specification] is just another protocol moving forward for us to be able to take advantage of and exploit in the home arena," said Andrew Hayden, a spokesman for IBM, which has been one of home networking's biggest promoters and developers.
"When you look at the retrofit market, you ask 'How do you put a network into [existing] homes?' This is one of the ways. You don't have to say, 'Tear out your walls.'"
IBM has even bigger visions for new homes, he said, in which new cables for high-speed Ethernet can be installed as houses are being built. But the HomePNA plan allows Big Blue to incorporate existing structures into the company's home networking future.
Notably absent from the HomePNA group is Microsoft (MSFT), although the company has shown support for technology developed by HomePNA member Tut Systems. HomePNA has adopted Tut's technology as the basis for its specification.
That technology drives Tut's HomeRun product, which creates a 1-Mbps Ethernet LAN over telephone wiring. Adapters connect computers and other devices to standard phone jacks. With HomeRun installed, a home's phone lines can simultaneously carry networking and standard phone calls, thanks to a technology called frequency division multiplexing.
A next-generation version of the HomePNA spec -- already under development, the group says -- will boost transmission speeds to over 10 Mbps.
The initial specification will be published for open use by vendors by the third quarter of 1998, the group said. It will coexist with current and future modem technologies, such as V.90, ADSL and cable modems, bringing Internet traffic into the home.
