Convergence of residential gateway technology

A new OSI-based model is described that can be used for the classification of residential gateways. It is applied to analyze current gateway solutions and draw evolutionary paths for the medium to long term. From this it is concluded that particularly set-top boxes and broadband modems, as opposed to game consoles and PCs, have a strong potential to evolve toward gateways that deliver network services to the home on all OSI layers, although they probably will not converge. In our model, we have not found any compelling reasons for the residential gateway industry to support concurrent multiple broadband access network connections on a single residential gateway in the near future

Triple Play Time

Abstract: Digital convergence thrusts telephony, television and the internet into the socalled 'triple play' offerings, creating new forms of rivalry between cable operators and telephone companies. Markets participants feel compelled to enter new industries to survive, even though their core competencies are limited to their primary market. The outcome of triple play competition is likely to depend on the speed of the development of new technologies and the adaptation of the regulatory environment. In the short run, telephone companies will enjoy an advantage attributable to switching costs. However, this advantage will erode as younger subscribers switch to telephony on the internet.triple play; bundling; digital convergence; broadband access; television and telephone

Fixed-Mobile Convergence in the 5G era: From Hybrid Access to Converged Core

The availability of different paths to communicate to a user or device introduces several benefits, from boosting enduser performance to improving network utilization. Hybrid access is a first step in enabling convergence of mobile and fixed networks, however, despite traffic optimization, this approach is limited as fixed and mobile are still two separate core networks inter-connected through an aggregation point. On the road to 5G networks, the design trend is moving towards an aggregated network, where different access technologies share a common anchor point in the core. This enables further network optimization in addition to hybrid access, examples are userspecific policies for aggregation and improved traffic balancing across different accesses according to user, network, and service context. This paper aims to discuss the ongoing work around hybrid access and network convergence by Broadband Forum and 3GPP. We present some testbed results on hybrid access and analyze some primary performance indicators such as achievable data rates, link utilization for aggregated traffic and session setup latency. We finally discuss the future directions for network convergence to enable future scenarios with enhanced configuration capabilities for fixed and mobile convergence.Comment: to appear in IEEE Networ

First experiences with Personal Networks as an enabling platform for service providers

By developing demonstrators and performing small-scale user trials, we found various opportunities and pitfalls for deploying personal networks (PNs) on a commercial basis. The demonstrators were created using as many as possible legacy devices and proven technologies. They deal with applications in the health sector, home services, tourism, and the transportation sector. This paper describes the various architectures and our experiences with the end users and the technology. We conclude that context awareness, service discovery, and content management are very important in PNs and that a personal network provider role is necessary to realize these functions under the assumptions we made. The PNPay Travel demonstrator suggests that PN service platforms provide an opportunity to develop true trans-sector services

Internet of Things-aided Smart Grid: Technologies, Architectures, Applications, Prototypes, and Future Research Directions

Traditional power grids are being transformed into Smart Grids (SGs) to address the issues in existing power system due to uni-directional information flow, energy wastage, growing energy demand, reliability and security. SGs offer bi-directional energy flow between service providers and consumers, involving power generation, transmission, distribution and utilization systems. SGs employ various devices for the monitoring, analysis and control of the grid, deployed at power plants, distribution centers and in consumers' premises in a very large number. Hence, an SG requires connectivity, automation and the tracking of such devices. This is achieved with the help of Internet of Things (IoT). IoT helps SG systems to support various network functions throughout the generation, transmission, distribution and consumption of energy by incorporating IoT devices (such as sensors, actuators and smart meters), as well as by providing the connectivity, automation and tracking for such devices. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on IoT-aided SG systems, which includes the existing architectures, applications and prototypes of IoT-aided SG systems. This survey also highlights the open issues, challenges and future research directions for IoT-aided SG systems

Dynamic Context Awareness of Universal Middleware based for IoT SNMP Service Platform

This study focused on the Universal Middleware design for the IoT (Internet of Things) service gateway for the implementation module of the convergence platform. Recently, IoT service gateway including convergence platform could be supported on dynamic module system that is required mounting and recognized intelligent status with the remote network protocol. These awareness concepts support the dynamic environment of the cross-platform distributed computing technology is supported by these idea as a Universal Middleware for network substitution. Distribution system commonly used in recent embedded systems include CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture), RMI (Remote Method Invocation), DCE (Distributed Computing Environment) for dynamic service interface, and suggested implementations of a device object context. However, the aforementioned technologies do not support each standardization of application services, communication protocols, and data, but are also limited in supporting inter-system scalability. In particular, in order to configure an IoT service module, the system can be simplified, and an independent service module can be configured as long as it can support the standardization of modules based on hardware and software components. This paper proposed a design method for Universal Middleware that, by providing IoT modules and service gateways with scalability for configuring operating system configuration, may be utilized as an alternative. This design could be a standardized interface provisioning way for hardware and software components as convergence services, and providing a framework for system construction. Universal Middleware Framework could be presented and dynamic environment standardization module of network protocols, various application service modules such as JINI (Apache River), UPnP (Universal Plug & Play), SLP (Service Location Protocol) bundles that provide communication facilities, and persistence data module. In this IoT gateway, management for based Universal Middleware framework support and available for each management operation, application service component could be cross-executed over SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) version 1, version 2, and version 3. The way of SNMP extension service modules are conducted cross-support each module and independent system meta-information that could be built life cycle management component through the MIB (Management Information Base) information unit analysis. Therefore, the MIB role of relation with the Dispatcher applied to support multiple concurrent SNMP messages by receiving incoming messages and managing the transfer of PDU (Protocol Data Unit) between the RFC 1906 network in this study. Results of the study revealed utilizing Universal Middleware that dynamic situations of context objects with mechanisms and tools to publish information could be consisted of IoT to standardize module interfaces to external service clients as a convergence between hardware and software platforms