HomePlug Powerline Supports Home Network Standard

The HomePlug Powerline Alliance is supporting the IEEE P1905 working group’s efforts to define the first standard for hybrid home networks. A P1905 network would include combinations of stationary home networking devices such as set-top boxes, home gateways, Blu-Ray players and TVs, and mobile devices such as laptops, tablets and cellphones.

The IEEE P1905 standard provides an abstraction layer to established powerline, wireless, coaxial cable and Ethernet home networking technologies – IEEE P1901/HomePlug AV, WiFi, MoCA and Ethernet. The standard enables consumers and service providers to combine the capabilities of otherwise disparate networks to maximize a home network’s overall performance and reliability. IEEE P1905’s abstraction layer common interface allows applications and upper layer protocols to be agnostic to the underlying home networking technologies. Packets can arrive and be transmitted over any technology according to quality of service (QoS) priorities. IEEE P1905 also simplifies network setup by providing common setup procedures for adding devices, establishing secure links, implementing QoS and managing the network.

Several HomePlug member companies are making significant contributions to the development of IEEE P1905, including Broadcom, Cisco Systems, France Telecom, Qualcomm Atheros, Ralink, Sigma Designs, SPiDCOM Technologies and STMicroelectronics. The group made substantial progress in April by approving the technical requirements, architecture and definitions upon which the standard will be based.