Coax For Cable Forms A Super Home Network

The Home Phone Networking Alliance (HPNA) standard uses the existing built-in twisted-pair phone lines and cable TV coax together to carry the video. It utilizes the bandwidth well above the voice frequencies used by the phone and above the bands used for DSL if it’s used as the broadband connection.

HPNA appears to work well, with claims of data rates to 240 Mbits/s. But can it sustain multiple uncompressed HD streams reliably? Some carriers who plan to offer in-home video on demand (VoD) and Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) have already adopted it. For example, AT&T selected the HPNA solution for its U-verse IPTV system, which is now being deployed.

The HomePlug Alliance also has a standard that permits high data rates up to about 200 Mbits/s using the standard home ac power wiring. That is certainly an option, but like HPNA, how well it can handle multiple HD streams remains to be seen.

MOCA ON TOP
On the other hand, MoCA uses coax, which was selected to deliver video in the first place. The cable has the bandwidth and it already exists in most places, making it a truly desirable option for home networking.

The MoCA organization, which now includes more than 50 members, has certified over a dozen bridges, routers, gateways, and modems. Furthermore, MoCA is incorporated in more than 700,000 of the home systems in Verizon’s FiOS passive optical fiber network for delivering video and other broadband services. That is expected to grow to 18 million homes by 2010.

Also, the c.LINK EN2210 chip set from MoCA founder and member Entropic Communications implements the MoCA 1.1 standard. With Broadcom and Conexant recently joining MoCA, we might expect to see some additional second-source silicon in the near future.