Project: Enabling new era networked home services

The proposed project will take into consideration the CO existent management standards in the area (e.g. extra-home like TR-069, OMA-DM, intra home like UPnP/DLNA) to define and develop a converged platform prototype that will ease and automate the integrated management (provision, configuration, monitoring/supervision, diagnosis and problem resolution) of the home network. The Home Gateway is the key device in this architecture, holding the intelligence needed to do a smart and converged management of the home network._x000D_The proposed project will provide the possibility to manage various local networking technologies besides UPnP. Work undertaken by the UPnP exePF Committee will be also taken into account, enhanced with the deployment of autonomic technologies, both in the local and remote parts, aiming at the intelligent management and supervision of the home network. For non standard managed devices, (ex M2M devices) that won't be OMA or TR compliant, a specific abstraction layer is needed. Figure 1 illustrates the proposed concept for the management platform. Standard management protocols (DSL forum, OMA) describe only how exchanges are done not exposing internal services of the GW. An interface for services, management components and management middleware is needed on the remote side._x000D_One of the biggest issues for operators and service providers is increasing operating expenses of home services deployed partly because of interacting devices connected to the home network, and their effect on the Quality of Service for other services. One of the CO objectives of the proposed platform is the advanced home network supervision, applying autonomic technologies to home network configuration, supervision, diagnosis and healing tasks, aiming at maximising their automation and intelligence when dealing with arising events and alarms avoiding thus unnecessary load to centralized management systems when dealing with local events. Realization of self-management functions revolves around increasing the automation of the intelligent control loop described as ‘Collect, Analyse/Decide, Enforce/Change, Control’. The realization of this intelligent loop eventually leads to a distributed, adaptive, global evolvable system capable of fostering continuous changes as shown in Figure 2. An autonomic plane composed of a knowledge and an orchestration plane will feed the management plane in charge of home network elements and home devices. The platform will provide software modules based on a hybrid rule-based inference engine._x000D_Moreover, end users have an increasing amount of content stored in their home networks, requiring to access them everywhere. An innovative solution will be developed, enabling ubiquitous access to content. The solution proposed will be based on the UPnP protocol, by addressing its restriction to LAN environments, so that it can be also used to access home contents from a location outside the home, giving it a WAN dimension. _x000D_There are two CO aspects regarding personalization in the Home Network that the project will address, namely authentication and services. One of current issues is the variety of authentication mechanisms for different services. A unified authentication mechanism for home services will be proposed based on the usage of a SIM card in the home gateway. This solution can be extended to provide mobility for the home environment: the user can authenticate in different locations and enjoy similar services to the ones available at home. Related to personalized services, a television system taking into account the user’s profiles and their wishes will be developed. In order to personalize home services, the design and reference implementation of a User Profile Management System will be carried out, based in ETSI guidelines and ongoing standardization work._x000D_

Acronym NetHomEra (Reference Number: 4779)
Duration 01/11/2009 - 01/10/2011
Project Topic The project will focus on a platform definition enabling new era home networking. The platform will support the exponential growth in the number of connected users, devices, services and contents, disentangling the complexity for providers.
Project Results
(after finalisation)
The NetHomEra project is linked to the Genio Platform, and has been completed within the global framework of the Genio platform._x000D_The Home networks are evolving towards a fast growing number of connected users, devices, services and user-generated contents, that is turning the home into an increasingly complex and hostile environment for telecommunication operators and service providers. The Genio/NetHomEra platform is aimed at developing home networks of the next generation . The CO objective of the project is the definition and the set up of a platform compliant with the drastic growth of the connected users as well as with the capability of management for the operators: the CO goal being an advanced supervision and self-management of the home network._x000D_Genio has given to each one the opportunity to work in the complex arena of Home Networks along with Ps, issued from different doCOs: academic, industrial or services, adding significant value and giving great benefits to the collaborative work._x000D_In this way, it has been quite beneficial to everyone to enlarge its working environment and to open up itself to broader view and opportunities._x000D_The different new concepts developed to answer the requirements of the next generation of home network have been successfully validated through a bench test at the end of the project._x000D_Hence, these results allow the participants to position themselves with new and advanced solutions in the field of Home networks or peripheral doCOs._x000D_Globally, it has been quite beneficial to Ethertrust to enlarge its working environment and to open up itself to broader view and opportunities._x000D_More specifically, the participation in this project should allow Ethertrust to position itself with new and advanced solution for authentication and credentials management in a mobile context and complex home networks environment._x000D_
Network Eurostars
Call Eurostars Cut-Off 2

Project partner

Number Name Role Country
7 EtherTrust Coordinator France
7 Global Digital Technologies Observer Greece
7 inAccess Networks SA Partner Greece
7 Intelligent Software Components S.A. Partner Spain
7 Laboratoire d'Informatique de Paris 6 Partner France
7 Ucopia Communications Partner France
7 Warp Networks, S.L. Partner Spain