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TIME Europe, March 22, 1999
The Home Network
Smart House Technology to enable your house to
respond to your every need will soon be here.
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You're on your way to work when suddenly you realize that once again you forgot to turn off the coffee pot. Turn around and head home and show up late at the office for the third time this month? Why not just use your mobile phone to tell the appliance to shut itself down? Later, when your boss isn't looking, you can use your office PC to monitor your child and the babysitter at home and even video-conference with your ailing out-of-town grandmother.
Driving home, your two-way wristwatch pager flashes a message from the refrigerator telling you that you're out of milk. You ignore it. The trash can has been keeping track of what you have been throwing out and has already placed an online order for delivery of refills. As you pull into the driveway your car alerts an electronic network in your home, activates lights and thermostats, and turns on the radio.
You decide not to go out tonight because so many indoor activities beckon. An intelligent navigator hooked up to your TV automatically downloaded your favorite show, and your computer is
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WIRING OPTIONS FOR PC NETWORKS
POWERLINE
Pros: No new wires, outlets everywhere
Cons: Slow, subject to Interference
Cost per node: $50-$100
Leading suppliers: Intelogis, X-10
DIGITAL WIRELESS
Pros: No wires, supports portable devices
Cons: High cost, not yet available
Cost per node: $200-$500
Leading suppliers: Motorola, ShareWave
PHONE
Pros: Uses same wire for data and voice
Cons: Outlets not everywhere, uses costly telco technology
Cost per node: $200-$300
Leading suppliers: Tut Systems, GTE
COAX
Pros: High speed, business-tested
Cons: Expensive installation
Cost per node: $70-$200
Leading suppliers: Linksys, 3Com
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reminding you of an invitation to party in one of the hottest virtual clubs, where bouncers are replaced by extra password protection to keep out the untrendy.
Welcome to the networked home. Bill Gates spent millions to automate his. The rest of us won't. Over the next few years a panoply of new technologies promises consumers cheap and easy networks linking their PCs and any electronic device in the house. With that will come myriad services designed to turn today's couch potatoes into tomorrow's house potatoes.
Gates spent a bundle for digital artwork, but soon networked pictures will be commonplace. The charger for your mobile phone may come equipped with a picture frame that will house an ever-changing display of online photos e-mailed by family and friends. The webphone in your kitchen or the screen of your interactive television could be used for the same purpose.
That's not all. Wireless technology installed in homes will enable portable devices — like pocket-sized electronic checkbooks, book-sized reading tablets and digital kitchen assistants — to interact. Egg-like devices may act as monitoring systems so we can see what is going on at home when we are not there. Dishwashers will e-mail their owners when their filters are clogged and repairmen will diagnose washing machine troubles online. A homeowner may even be able to e-mail appliances with an order to work together to ensure that the electricity bill stays below a certain sum per month.
The genie which will help make this possible is, well, Jini. But though it's pronounced the same way as the mythical spirit in a lamp, this one is software developed by Sun Microsystems. It is designed to enable any type of electronic device to interact and connect to the Internet. New local area networking technologies are also emerging, such as wireless and powerline connections, which allow consumers to link appliances without installing new wires.
The new home networking technologies will arrive just in time to link up with long-awaited high speed Internet connections. As more consumers move to faster, flat rate services such as those delivered via cable modem (see story, page TD18), they will leave the Internet on all the time, spawning a whole new category of services such as remote maintenance of home appliances and controlled energy consumption. And Internet access will increasingly come through the new breed of Net appliances (see story, page TD12).
By 2002, tech consultancy Gartner Group predicts, most people will no longer access the Web via PCs. Sun is now working with America Online and an as-yet-unnamed manufacturer to develop an "AOL anywhere" Internet appliance — a decision taken after an AOL poll revealed that 40% of subscribers bought expensive PCs only to e-mail and surf the Web.
Jini-enabled devices will share data and instructions via the Internet, a cable or an infrared light beam without the need for a PC. Until now, connecting devices like a mobile phone and a Palm Pilot required that their software and hardware be designed to work together. Given most devices weren't designed to interact, the only solution was to link up via a PC — a task requiring lots of patience and a computer engineering degree. Soon, with a $30 cable bought at a hardware store and a simple Jini adapter, a consumer could directly connect a new digital camera to an old printer and make it work. Jini software, announced in January, already has the backing of 37 technology and consumer electronics companies, such as Philips, Nokia, Ericsson and Bosch-Siemens.
Sun expects home networking to be big business. Chairman Scott McNealy points out that there are about 70 million personal computers, but some 9 billion microprocessors embedded in consumer electronic devices and home appliances. In the near future, for an extra $5 or $10, manufacturers could put a Jini-enabled chip inside appliances that would allow them to talk to other devices and connect to the Internet. Sun's dream is to put Jini on just about everything.
The first Jini-enabled printers, disk drives and other computer devices will appear at the end of this year, followed by consumer electronic devices and finally home appliances like washing machines and toasters in 2001, says Mark Tolliver, Sun Microsystems' president of consumer and embedded software. Once that happens, all the devices in the home will be able to network.
But the first home networking breakthroughs are happening with PCs. As people buy more than one PC there is a financial incentive to share a single printer, modem and Internet connection. Networking solutions include using existing phone wires, electrical lines or wireless technology (see box). For example, Ambi, a new product from Philips Electronics, incorporates ShareWave technology which permits a high-speed wireless connection between the PC and the TV. That way one person can play a PC game on the TV in the family room while a second person uses a spreadsheet on the PC screen in a home office. Both applications reside on a single PC in the home office, with digital wireless technology establishing the connection between PC and TV.
Advances in wireless technology will also allow for the automatic transfer of information between Internet appliances and computers. A consortium of mobile phone, chip and computer makers is working on a technology codenamed BlueTooth which will allow the wireless transmission of voice and data in home networks. Motorola of the U.S. is working on software — codenamed PIANO for personal interactive appliance network — that enables two devices to network automatically when they're close. In about a year's time, when the first products using BlueTooth, PIANO and Jini technology are ready, a laptop user will be able to transfer files via a mobile phone even though the phone is inside a briefcase and there are no wires connecting the two devices — one device will automatically signal the other that it needs to connect.
Road warriors will be the first to reap the advantages. Someone with a palmtop or organizer could be automatically checked in to their hotel or on to their flight without having to stand in line. The mobile terminal would automatically signal the reservations system.
On the home front, there will be a need for gateway devices that link appliances to the Internet but also act as a firewall to prevent hacking. Why use an additional layer when the Internet could reach your toaster directly? The answer is control, security and cost. Hanging all devices — equipped with the necessary computing power and security solutions — on the Internet is far more costly than centralizing some of the computing power and most of the security on a hub device.
Sweden's Ericsson is testing such a device, called the EBOX, to control home energy consumption. Other possible services are home remote monitoring of elderly or sick people who live alone, and remote control of home security systems. According to technology consultancy Forrester Research, consumers may also find that service providers such as phone companies can construct secure neighborhood intranets to screen e-mail, offer virus protection and provide remote file backup — imagine losing your family's photo album if your system crashes.
While high tech consultants agree that demand for home networking will increase significantly over the next few years, no one is really sure what the killer application will be. Forrester's Therese Torris warns that it is difficult to make money on services like remote maintenance of appliances. After all, if you fix something before the client realizes it's broken, they don't appreciate what you do. And, warns Forrester, too many reminders from smart devices to take out the trash or pick up milk could create a backlash. But having the electronic equivalent of a full-time personal assistant may be enough to convince most overstressed people to put up with a little cyber-nagging.
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