Standard setter seeks to unify power, wired, wireless LANs
One ring main to rule them ail
The IEEE has put in place a programme to devise a standard that will bridge wired and wireless network technologies in the home.
Dubbed P1905.1, the draft standard will "provide a common, protocol-agnostic interface" to not only 802.11 Wi-Fi and 802.3 Ethernet but also the less well-known MoCa (multimedia over co-ax) spec and the 1901 powerline standard.
P1905.1 is all about providing an front end to which applications can speak without having to worry about whether the data being sent out over the network is being transmitted wirelessly, over wires or both.
And all this will happen with end-to-end quality of service (QoS) provision, the IEEE said, the better to deliver a future in which we're all streaming lots of HD content from room to room.
Here's the geek part:
"Also specified are procedures, protocols and guidelines to provide a simplified user experience to add devices to the network, to set up encryption keys, to extend the network coverage, and to provide network management features to address issues related to neighbour discovery, topology discovery, path selection, QoS negotiation, and network control and management."
Do we need this? All of the technologies which P1905.1 will bridge work perfectly well together, as anyone with a wireless router that also networks up wired devices like a Nas boxe will tell you.
The IEEE's pitch is that P1905.1 will make such set-ups send data packets back and forth more efficiently and therefore more rapidly.
So is there an agenda here? It looks like there may be. Says the P1905.1 draft standard working group homepage: "The purpose of the standard is to facilitate the integration of 1901 with other home networking technologies."
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COMMENTS
"... w/out having to worry [if] the data ... is ... transmitted wirelessly, over wires or both."
Isn't that what a networking stack is for?
Co-ax and powerline sometimes don't play together nicely.
As anyone with AT&T U-Verse can attest, whether it be through faulty implementation on AT&T's part or not, the two formats don't always play nicely together. In fact, they often don't play with each other, period, at all.
Convergence is far better than having a half dozen different standards, even if they all ready play together relatively nicely in a proper setup. People might screw up P1905.1, but I wager it'll be a better standard for everyone than the scattered rest combined.
Homeplug
Wired Networking?
Nah.,. It's 75% wireless. Wide band OFDM Transmitter & Receiver.
It mostly uses the mains to power itself.
To AC "well I for one"
Your issue is not WiFi or lack of standards. But the implementation. Disable the WiFi on such stupidly configured box and add your own Airpoint.
If you think folks won't screw up P1905.1 then you have little experiance of Humans *OR* Technology.
as anyone with a wireless router that also networks up wired devices like a Nas boxe will tell you.
well I for one (person with a wifi network and a wired NAS Box) will tell you sometimes it aint that simple.. there are a very large number of crap ISP Provided routers in use that do not bridge the wifi segment of the network to the wired correctly, the original orange live boxes for instance could only operate a client on the wifi and could not bridge in another wifi router to provide another wired segment.. any work that can standardise connectivity across networking types a bit more is in my book welcome.
